Here's a twist: "The lights are off, but everybody's home!"

That could just be the new slogan that saves the planet from all possible disasters both known and unknown. I like it.

So do you feel cooler today after the world shut its lights off for an hour last night? If all went as planned, summer will arrive a day later this year and take some pressure off the butterflies.

I don't know about where you live, but something amazing occurred right here in Phoenix last evening. The news report said that at Chase field, the home of the Arizona Diamondbacks, in the seventh inning, they closed the retractable dome in observance of "Earth Hour."

Did you get that? The article didn't say they played baseball in the dark That could only benefit the Diamondbacks this season. No, they closed the dome so that those enormously bright lights weren't visible to inspectors.

OK, there probably weren't any inspectors, but one day there will be, don't you think? And fines? And imprisonment?

Maybe that's too strong. It'll probably just be jail time. So at least your relatives will be able to visit without traveling for hours, burning gas, and adding a thousand times more CO2 to the air than your light bulb did.

And isn't the Diamondbacks' gesture the perfect symbolism for the "movement?" It says, "We'll keep doing what we've been doing, we'll just be less obvious." Hollywood does it even better. The stars fly all over, many in private planes, and they tell you to conserve. The stars are exempt, and you want it that way because after all, the show must go on.

So if you're one who joyously participated in "Earth Hour," do congratulate yourself. You added a little more darkness to our world. What should we call it, D'Earth? That's French, you know. And what shall we call you participants? By Jove, I think I've got it! How about Darkies?

It's too much, folks, I can't keep up. There are so many angles to the disgraceful Obama saga that I just can't address them all. Just as I begin to write about one, something new supersedes it in importance and priority.

And today's revelations are real beauties.

Barackie said on ABC's hideous The View this morning that ""Had the reverend not retired, and had he not acknowledged that what he had said had deeply offended people and were inappropriate and mischaracterized what I believe is the greatness of this country, for all its flaws, then I wouldn't have felt comfortable staying at the church,"

So Obie confirmed two things:

1) That Wrighty "has acknowledged" that the many hateful things he's said "deeply offended" people and "were inappropriate."

2) That Obie has no plan to change churches - and we already know that the church itself seems to have no plans of changing, either.

The good people at American Thinker seem to feel Obama was saying that the Rev. had apologized somewhere, though not publicly, and presumably to Barry. They add that apparently Barry is Wrighty's agent of choice to relay that apology to America.

But I don't think what Obama said indicates any apology was given, or even offered. I mean, I acknowledge that I offend a lot of people too. "F" 'em. And the part about his words and actions being inappropriate can mean anything, such as: not suitable coming from the pulpit of a church, even if the congregation relishes them... or maybe the good Rev feels even stronger hatred than he expressed?

My conclusion then is that Obama is a lawyerly liar.

And another thing, this is no longer a Wright-wrong issue. As they say on American idol, Barry took it and made it his own!

Meanwhile, past Pastor Wright, for his part, has bought a ten thousand square foot house in a gated community in Chicago. Forget that I don't recall any Catholic priest ever doing that, this isn't just unusual, it's outrageous.

What was it that Negro Nationalist Philosophy or whatever Reverend Wright calls it... what did it espouse? Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it rejecting "middle class values?" Didn't Mickey Obama tell young women to shun corporate jobs?

But OK, I think I get it, Wrighty's house purchase isn't hypocritical - he simply bypassed middle class values and went right to wealthy.

-----

By the way, it struck me that this sounds a bit like the sort of dishonest hyperbole that liberals are fond of leveling at their targets, but the difference is that nothing I've said is untrue or even exaggerated, while liberals never get anything Wright.

It's clear Barack Obama is not well. He's maybe not as sick as his pastor, but he's clearly ill. He sought out a racist hater and made the man his advisor, and in his one chance to denounce Jerry Wright, Obama not only refused, but he equated the minister's hatred, his racism, and his many character flaws to his white grandmother's rational fear of black men - an incredibly incongruent comparison. and he attacked an innocent bystander, Grandma, the woman who raised him and made this all possible, while at the same time he showcased his "two wrongs make a Wright" mentality.

The next day, Barry himself uttered a racist remark when he labeled his own grandmother "a typical white person." I don't know about you, but I'd love to hear granny's reply.

So then is Obama a typical black person? Because he's certainly typical of the "worshipers" at Trinity Church. Do they even have white people in their congregation? If they do, I would certainly agree they aren't typical white people. They're sick too.

In an amazing bit of coincidence, while defending Reverend Wright and Trinity on Day Two TS (in the year of The Speech), Barry lamented that people had taken a few examples and painted them as representative of the pastor and the church, and he added, "if you go there on Easter, on this Easter Sunday, and you sat down there in the pew, you would think this is just like any other church."

Well, here's what attendees heard two days later, Easter Sunday, 2008:

Rev. Otis Moss: "No one should start a ministry with lynching, no one should end their ministry with lynching. The lynching was national news. The RNN, the Roman News Network, was reporting it and NPR, National Publican Radio had it on the radio. The Jerusalem Post and the Palestine Times all wanted exclusives, they searched out the young ministers, showed up unannounced at their houses, tried to talk with their families, called up their friends, wanted to get a quote on how do you feel about the lynching?" "...If I was Ice Cube I’d say it a little differently — ‘You picked the wrong folk to mess with.’"

The title of the sermon: "How to Handle a Public Lynching." A church pamphlet decried Wright’s treatment and reinforced the concept of a "modern-day lynching."

"We are all being vilified," Pastor Otis said. "This is an attack on the African American church tradition."

We can only audaciously hope that's true..

The bigger question is, are there people out there who care enough about B.O. to stage an intervention?

The Inkblot

On Friday we noted that Barack Obama's "spiritual mentor," the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, had reprinted a Hamas op-ed in his church bulletin. It turns out that Obama issued a quiet condemnation of Wright's editorial decision, as the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports:

"I have already condemned my former pastor's views on Israel in the strongest possible terms, and I certainly wasn't in church when that outrageously wrong Los Angeles Times piece was re-printed in the bulletin," Obama said in a statement emailed to JTA late Thursday, and referring to critics who noted that Obama had been in church when Wright had made controversial statements. "Hamas is a terrorist organization, responsible for the deaths of many innocents, and dedicated to Israel's destruction, as evidenced by their bombarding of Sderot in recent months. I support requiring Hamas to meet the international community's conditions of recognizing Israel, renouncing violence, and abiding by past agreements before they are treated as a legitimate actor."

That could hardly be clearer, could it? But a year-old article from ElectronicIntifada.com suggests that Obama has, fairly recently, held views on the subject that are completely at variance with those he now espouses. The author, Ali Abunimah, is a co-founder of the site:

I first met Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama almost ten years ago when, as my representative in the Illinois state senate, he came to speak at the University of Chicago. He impressed me as progressive, intelligent and charismatic. I distinctly remember thinking "if only a man of this calibre could become president one day." . . .

Over the years since I first saw Obama speak I met him about half a dozen times, often at Palestinian and Arab-American community events in Chicago including a May 1998 community fundraiser at which Edward Said was the keynote speaker. In 2000, when Obama unsuccessfully ran for Congress I heard him speak at a campaign fundraiser hosted by a University of Chicago professor. On that occasion and others Obama was forthright in his criticism of US policy and his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The last time I spoke to Obama was in the winter of 2004 at a gathering in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. He was in the midst of a primary campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat he now occupies. But at that time polls showed him trailing.

As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front." He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the The [sic] Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy, "Keep up the good work!"

Abunimah argued that Obama, in an effort "to woo wealthy pro-Israel campaign donors," had made an "about-face":

He is merely doing what he thinks is necessary to get elected and he will continue doing it as long as it keeps him in power.

It is possible that Obama had a sincere change of heart--that he came to see the merits of the Israeli side of the argument. It is also possible that Obama has no sincere views on the subject--that when he was traveling in radical-chic Chicago circles, he told people like Abunimah what they wanted to hear, and now that he has gone national, he has switched to telling a more mainstream Democratic constituency what it wants to hear.

But what does Obama really believe--about the Middle East, about Wright's "black liberation theology" or about any other complicated and sensitive topic? The question is a Rorschach inkblot; the answer reveals more about one's emotional response to Obama than about Obama's intellectual response to the world.

If Obama makes you feel good about yourself, you will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that his beliefs are similar to yours. See, for example, Obama enthusiast Marty Peretz expounding on Obama's sympathy for the Jewish state, or Douglas Kmiec, a judicial conservative and onetime Romney adviser, explaining that even though Obama has shown no sign of agreeing with him on "important fundamentals," he is "convinced based upon [Obama's] public pronouncements and his personal writing that on each of these questions he is not closed to understanding opposing points of view, and as best as it is humanly possible, he will respect and accommodate them."

If you are unmoved by Obama, by contrast, there is ample reason to be skeptical about whether he holds beliefs congenial to yours, or indeed any beliefs at all. This skepticism is only amplified by over-the-top accolades for Obama, such as this one from Frank Schaffer, a self-described "survivor" of "an evangelical/fundamentalist childhood":

Obama offers civility in the midst of a drunken national bar fight. Obama speaks in complete sentences, well-turned paragraphs, offers thoughts with intellectual depth, nuance, humility and compassion. Obama is a reasoned essay cast before sound-bite swine who seem ready to tear anything that falls into their sty to shreds.

By providence or blind luck, we are being given a second chance. In Obama our founders appear once again stepping from the mists of time to offer a wayward great, great grandchild an opportunity for redemption. . . .

Obama stands in the tradition of our founders, a citizen running for office, not a "professional" striver. But the cry goes up, "He doesn't have the experience!" Experience? At what? Playing games with our country's soul while the only real game in our nation's capitol is hanging on to power, enriching oneself at the political trough through connections, taking us to war after war, making us hated throughout the world by catering to our insatiable, unreasoning fears.

Obama is the man who reaches out to help a dying passerby and the passerby snarls, "What do you really want?"

Obama's supporters are proud that they are acting out of "hope" rather than, as Schaeffer puts it, "insatiable, unreasoning fears." But what kind of "hope" is it that dehumanizes detractors, deeming them "swine"? And isn't fear, or at least serious unease, an appropriate response to a politician who, however soothing his own demeanor, seems to have a knack for inspiring such unreason?

Damning With Faint Praise
Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico endorsed Barack Obama Friday, and we got a kick out of Obama's praise for Richardson, reported by CNN:

Obama said, "I am extraordinarily grateful to have the support of one of the great public servants of these United States."

"He's done the kind of work that you want from your public servants, somebody who's driven not just by raw ambition, not just by an interest in personal aggrandizement," Obama added. "He's been somebody who's been motivated by the desire to make the lives of his constituents and working people a little bit better."

So according to Obama, Richardson is driven in part by "raw ambition" and "an interest in personal aggrandizement." But he also is interested in making people lives "a little bit better," and that's enough to make him "one of the great public servants of these United States."

Obama sure is cynical about his fellow politicians, isn't he?

The title reflects how I see this election - in black and white, so to speak, but I found a fellow who fills in shades of greatness... and uh... ungreatness

A society that views the tempering of time as an infirmity is a society in trouble. The no-name generation is more vital in its late 60s and early 70s than previous ones in their 40s and 50s. It may struggle for a "misremembered" name on occasion, but it knows far better than its juniors who it is, where it comes from, and for what it stands. No one better represents this than Mr. McCain. His authenticity, unlike that of his Democratic Party counterparts, is beyond question.

Some of you may have realized that I have little tolerance for liberals, and the following story provides reason enough. . In my argument for why the Iraq war was necessary, I don't include the fact that we we did what no one else could or would - we got rid of one of the worst tyrants in modern history. That's just a side benefit.

Saddam himself was worse than Darfur, worse even than Rwanda, and the reason I say that is that his terror was ongoing and unending, and his methods were so terrible that wanton killing almost pales in comparison. Saddam's was a family business, and his sons had already demonstrated that they were perhaps even better able to carry on their inheritance.

It was so bad that today, when the following was posted on Drudge, I couldn't even get past the headline until I'd had time to steel myself against what I might come upon in the article. And just before I started to read it, I thought about the seemingly endless parade of idiots like Lenny and Snowy, you know, those two Laverne and Shirley rejects who want to ignore reality and continue to claim that we shouldn't have gone into Iraq. To borrow Gutfeld's tagline, they truly are worse than Hitler if they believe that, but even though they do, I don't have to countenance their expression of it, much less entertain the equally nonsensical and never ending stupidity that liberals substitute for thought.

So as I read "Saddam-era torture tools in mobile museum of horror..." I got angrier and angrier, not at Saddam Hussein, but at liberals - this less than worthless lot keeping America from being as great as it deserves to be. That's right, I'm saying it - liberals are bad for America. They're bad for anybody, actually, but they are particularly bad for America, and the specifics are too many and too long to get into here.

Only America could have ended this (by the way, please excuse the misspellings, the article was written in British and I chose not to make corrections):

Gruesome instruments of torture and the personal effects of victims killed by henchmen of dictator Saddam Hussein haunt Iraqis five years after the fall of his brutal regime.

The display, currently on show in Baghdad, is due to travel across the country in "tribute to the thousands of martyrs" murdered when Saddam was in power, former political prisoner Amed Naji al-Badawi said...

Nooses hang from the ceiling, and a wooden coffin-like box containing a mediaeval-looking torture rack on which prisoners were pinned and stretched takes centre stage. Pictures of hangings and bodies are plastered all over the walls...

Badawi, a stout man in his 50s who spent five years in the jails of Saddam's feared "mukhabarat" secret service because of his alleged support for the Shiite Dawa party... was arrested along with 13 members of his family -- and seven of his brothers were killed by Saddam's goons.

Over the past five years Badawi's committee has helped to locate 106 mass graves and the remains of 1,050 men, women and children killed by members of the ousted regime.

The display was set up to mark the 17th anniversary of the start of a Shiite uprising in southern Iraq on March 1, 1991, a day after Saddam's regime agreed to a truce with US-led coalition forces after its defeat in the first Gulf war...

The names of dozens of those victims are inscribed on black banners hung in the museum, next to a portrait of Shiite leader Mohammed Sadek al-Sadr who was killed in 1999. The assassination of the Iraqi Shiite dignitary sparked major riots in Najaf, one of Iraq's holiest cities for Shiite Muslims.

In the middle of the room a single doll wrapped in a white shroud represents children killed during the iron-fisted rule of Saddam. It is surrounded with toys and cheap plastic flowers.

Mothers and widows who have visited the museum have broken down in tears at the sight of this display, Badawi said.

Also on show are cases containing the personal effects of some of Saddam's victims, whose remains or mutilated bodies have been found over the past five years in dozens of mass graves across Iraq.

The artefacts include combs, identity cards, a rosary, a sock caked in soil, a fragment of a pair of spectacles and bloodstained clothes. Arrest warrants signed by Saddam himself are also on view.

I've omitted the rest. It made me sick, and I didn't want it on my blog - just like I don't want liberals who make me sicker. But I still tolerate them as part of my ceaseless quest to find a rational one... It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it - just like someone had to topple Saddam.

I've never liked Barack Obama. I see his as a slick undertaker.

Now,.thanks to Reverend Wright, I see the freshman Senator as something else that might have gone unnoticed because I didn't care about Barack Obama. Wright has accomplished the impossible - he made me care, and I hope a lot of other people care too, because Obama isn't just an inexperienced politician, he's a bad guy.

If you think that's too strong, what kind of guy sits in a racist's church for twenty years and says nothing, but demands the firing of Don Imus for an inconsequential remark? Still not enough for you? What kind of a guy won't reject a racist outright, but is willing to use his living grandmother in a weak attempt to bolster his case?

Contrary to what Obama had been saying, his campaign is very much about race and very much race based. A February, 2007 Rolling Stone article, which I'd never have read were it not for Reverend Wright's hateful remarks, paints a picture of Obama manipulating and exploiting white women by playing to a segment of that group's fascination with black men..In the larger sense, Obama is appealing to white guilt: "Vote Obama and clear your conscience" could be his slogan

In 1996, many hoped Colin Powell would be the Republican candidate for President. Powell easily transcended race, and I believe he could have been elected. He had every asset that's being attributed to Obama and far more - Powell was accomplished, mature, and a war hero.

I dare say that race, if it ever reared its ugly head if Powell were the candidate, would have been quickly dismissed as irrelevant or absurd. Powell is a man who doesn't need his blackness to gain votes, nor could it be used against him since, for example, it is unthinkable that he'd have sat still for a moment during one of Reverend Wright's hideous sermons.

Barack Obama, on the other hand has shown he's not hesitant to use race when it suits him, and it suits him because that's about all he's got going for him.

He's being compared to a Rorschach Test, and Obama himself has said, "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views." Shelby Steele says of that, "Human visibility is Mr. Obama's Achilles heel. If we see the real man, his contradictions and bents of character, he will be ruined as an icon, as a 'blank screen.'"

That's the invisible service Reverend Wright has performed, he's introduced us to Obama, the man, and he's rather unremarkable... at best. In fact, he's incredibly common for a Harvard educated lawyer. He's a man who sat meekly silent in tacit agreement with the evil rantings of a lunatic pastor, and he did that for 19 years and 364 days longer that I would have and probably 19 years, 364 days and one second longer than Colin Powell would have if you get my drift. Luckily, John McCain never visited. He may have just shot Wright where he stood.

Steel asks, "How does one 'transcend' race in this church?"

Perhaps even worse is the willingness of Barack Obama to drag his white and still living grandmother into the mess he created for himself, equating her with his minister and going so far as to relate that she's apparently made what he considers to be racist remarks about blacks.

And this man thinks of himself as a uniter.

Another thing I learned from this whole sordid matter is that apparently many blacks and many black preachers subscribe to the sort of philosophy that Reverend Wright espouses. That wasn't something I'd previously suspected. It wasn't even something I'd considered. My concept of the black church was one of joy and redemption set to up-tempo spirituals. Now my conception is that many black churches bear a closer resemblance to a Palestinian mosque.

As for Barack Obama's family, it's now perfectly clear what sentiments are behind Michelle Obama's remarks that America is just mean and that she's never been proud of her country, but while that's bad enough, consider what the Obamas have subjected their children to hearing and seeing - and probably not just in church.

According to Steele, "the floodlight of a presidential campaign has trained on this usually hidden corner of contemporary black life: a mindless indulgence in a rhetorical anti-Americanism as a way of bonding and of asserting one's blackness. Yet Jeremiah Wright, splashed across America's television screens, has shown us that there is no real difference between rhetorical hatred and real hatred.... there is already enough pathos in Barack Obama to make him a cautionary tale. His public persona thrives on a manipulation of whites (bargaining), and his private sense of racial identity demands both self-betrayal and duplicity. His is the story of a man who flew so high, yet neglected to become himself."

Obama and Wright have performed a real service. After this, I don't think white America will feel quite as guilty, and black America might understand that preaching hatred in any context is unacceptable. We can only hope (thanks again, Barack) they also come to believe it's wrong.

Unfortunately, I know it's too much to think that Democrats will finally realize that identity politics is divisive and ultimately self-defeating.

As I said, if Colin Powell had run in 1996, I believe he could have been elected, and think of what that could have meant:

- No chaotic second term for Bill Clinton and thus no Democratic abandonment of values and the rule of law,

- A general in the Presidency when 9/11 happened,

- No incumbent in 2004, but an incumbent in 2008 - so Obama, if he ran, would more likely be seen for what he is - nothing... and besides, America would then have already been there and done that on race - and way better.

I envy Barack Obama. I mean, rarely does a person get to explain his explanations.

Usually, when one has to deal with something that's blowing up in one's face, he gets one chance to tell his one story. The people then either buy his account or they don't, and if they don't, well, as they say in the black community, "The dear boy's muffed it."

But Barack gets a do-over after having failed utterly last weekend in his attempt to detail how it was possible to be a member of Trinity Church, attend regularly for decades, and not realize that his mentor and advisor, Reverend Wright was an America-hating racist pastor of a congregation apparently crawling with a lot of the same type of people

In several interviews, the freshman Senator alleged that he was never in church on those occasions when Wright was accusing America of genocide, condemning Israel for existing, and simulating the nasty right there in the pulpit.

All I can say is, if Obama was able to pick the exact right dates to sleep in, I'd like him to pick my lottery numbers..Because after hearing Obama's explanation, well let me ask, did he remind you of anyone?

Isn't Barack the black Sergeant Shultz?

"I see nothing... nothing... "

We all know what a harmless, lovable Nazi Shultz was. His very best quality was his ineptness. And yes, OK, I know Sergeant Shultz probably wasn't a Nazi... just like, according to Hillary, Obama probably isn't a Muslim.

Still, maybe it will help if the Senator shows up for his speech today wearing a long, gray coat and a helmet? At least that way, people won't be paying much attention to what he says. Then later, they'll realize that's the same sort of thing Obama must have experienced for all those years of seeing his preacher looking like a ranting mental patient in a bullfighter's getup.

And wouldn't it be ironic if Barack Obama were to give a speech about what he didn't hear and why he didn't hear it... and nobody heard the speech?

So the best-case scenario as I see it is that Obama's speech will be transforming - he'll go from imitating Sergeant Shultz to imitating Maxwell Smart...

And loving it!

The media is characterizing the current controversy as "Obama's pastor problem," when it is nothing of the sort. It should be called the "The Audacity of a Dope."

The other day, the American Thinker parsed Obama's statement in which he denounced a long string of comments by Reverend Wright, but not Wright himself, and it showed how, in lawyer-speak, it was a non-denouncing denunciation. But before the DVDs and NewsMax, the New York Times had said Obama would have a difficult time distancing himself from Reverend Wright.

Now ABC News', Jake Tapper, is saying that the reason Wright was disinvited from Obama's announcement of his candidacy was because of a Rolling Stone article from February, 2007 titled: "The Radical Roots of Barack Obama." Interestingly (in lieu of a more appropriate word), the original title of that article has been changed. So in addition to the question it raises about Obama, namely, "What did he know and when did he know it," Rolling Stone has its own question to answer: "When did you change the title, and why?"

That original title is pretty sobering, wouldn't you agree? But remember, this was a time when Hillary Clinton had already been pre-ordained to be the nominee, and Obama was the nobody he should have remained. Now, of course, it's nearly the reverse, so maybe that's why Rolling Stone has changed its title. What do you think of the updated one:: "Destiny's Child?"

New and improved? Uplifting? I mean, with a title like "The Radical Roots of Barack Obama," you might get a bad impression of the Senator, might you not?

A more neutral title would seem less prejudicial? Not "Destiny's Child," of course, I mean something like: "Obama - HUGGH, What Is He Good For?"

No, seriously, If the title had become "The Roots of Barack Obama," would anyone object?.

"Destiny's Child" makes Obama seem positively cherubic. Then again, maybe it's just me?

Last Friday, Bill O'Reilly and Bernie Goldberg agreed that they've never seen the media as corrupt as it is now - nothing any informed person didn't know already. Still, when I saw what Rolling Stone had done, it shocked me. It may not set a new standard for brazenness, but it is an egregious breach of the public trust in my opinion, a bit like trying to put lipstick on a manipulator!?!

You can find the Rolling Stone article with its new title here. You'll also find a promotional link to another Stone article, title presumably unchanged, that reads - "Matt Taibbi on Mike Huckabee, Our Favorite Right-Wing Nut Job "

Rolling Stone, Feb. 2007:

This is as openly radical a background as any significant American political figure has ever emerged from... Wright is not an incidental figure... (Obama)... uses Wright as a "sounding board"... Both the title of Obama's second book, The Audacity of Hope, and the theme for his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 come from Wright's sermons... the surprising thing - for such a measured politician - is the depth of radical feeling that seeps through, the amount of Jeremiah Wright that's packed in there.

And this:

Obama could have picked any church... Obama chose Trinity United. He picked Jeremiah Wright. Obama writes in his autobiography that on the day he chose this church, he felt the spirit of black memory and history moving through Wright...

Obama's life story is a splicing of two different roles... One is that of the consummate insider... The other is that of a black man who feels very deeply that this country's exercise of its great inherited wealth and power has been grossly unjust.

So Obama is being disingenuous, but it may or may not be with malicious intent. He not only had to have prior knowledge about his pastor's incendiary hate-speech even if he couldn't recite the entire spiel verbatim.. Three articles pointed that out last year before any of the reverend's actual remarks became widely known.

Today, James Taranto asked, "Are we wrong to think that Barack Obama's campaign is imploding?" He added that Jeremiah Wright "turns out to be a certifiable America-hating crackpot."

Obama's church has removed a black creed from its site, but on Barry Young's radio program today, his assistant said, "If I substituted 'white" for each mention of 'black," I'd be the biggest racist in the country."

Taranto:

Wright.proclaims himself an exponent of "black liberation theology." He cites James Cone, a distinguished professor at New York's Union Theological Seminary, whom he credits for having "systematized" this strain of Christianity. Here is a quote from Cone, explaining black liberation theology (hat tip: Spengler, a pseudonymous columnist for the Asia Times):

Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal.

Soaringly Palestinian!

Taranto: "Could Obama really have been unaware for all these years that his spiritual mentor follows a racially adversarial theology?"

Mr. Taranto refers to Obama's book: "Without evident disapproval (Obama) quotes a passage... in which Wright describes 'a world . . . where white folks' greed runs a world in need,'" and he notes that "Writing on the Puffington Host, self-described Obama backer Gerald Posner says...'"

There was no more traumatic event in our recent history than 9/11. Reverend Wright's comments would have raised a ruckus...coming so soon after the attack itself... If the parishioners of Trinity United Church were not buzzing about (them), then it could only seem to be because those comments were not out of character with what he (usually) preached... I have to wonder if it is really possible for the Obamas to have been parishioners--by 9/11 more than a decade--and not to have known very clearly how radical Wright's views were. If, on the other hand, parishioners were shocked by Wright's vitriol only days after more than 3,000 Americans had been killed by terrorists, they would have talked about it incessantly. Barack--a sitting Illinois State Senator--would have been one of the first to hear about it."

Taranto asks what Obama has to say for himself, and he answers his own question: "Essentially nothing. In his own Puffington Host post, the senator issues a series of condemnations without troubling himself to specify what he is condemning:"

In the same post, Obama States that Wright "has never been my political advisor." Wright served on an advisory committee for the Obama campaign - until last Friday.

Taranto continued:

Why does Obama feel it necessary to resort to these lawyerly--dare we say Clintoneque--evasions? Why can't he simply speak from the heart and tell us what he really thinks of black liberation theology? Two possibilities come to mind...

One is that Obama's condemnation and rejection of Wright's appalling statements is not sincere. That is not to say that Obama shares Wright's hatreds, we... would be surprised if he did. It may just be that the whole question is a matter of indifference to him, except inasmuch as it affects his own political ambitions. If Obama doesn't speak from the heart, perhaps it is because his heart has nothing to say.

At this point, though, "distancing" himself plainly is not enough. Obama needs to renounce Wright and his noxious beliefs forcefully and specifically, even if he personally is blasé about them.

But this brings us to the second possible reason he hasn't done so... it's not as if the malevolent minister is preaching to empty pews. There is a segment of the black community that embraces Wright-style bigotry... "I wouldn't call it radical. I call it being black in America," said one congregation member outside the church last Sunday... Wright's congregation has 8,000 members, the biggest in its denomination, according to the Religion News Service. Possibly Obama has reason to fear losing crucial black support if he expressly repudiates Wright and what he stands for.

I've been saying that the Democrats own racism in America, and I've also speculated that blacks may be more racist than whites. Last Sunday at Trinity Church, people such as myself were all accused of sullying the Church's good name, and that Church is huge as churches go. That community clearly doesn't see anything wrong with accusing America of genocide, asking God, from the pulpit, to damn our country, and that community doesn't see anything wrong with using vulgarities and mimicking sexual acts from that same pulpit. That community doesn't see anything wrong with blaming whitey again and again.

And Barack Obama claims he knew none of it and that he can bring us all together. And if you believe that, I've got a bridge made of DVDs to sell you.