It’s time to back away the Jeremiah Wright kerfluffle.

If Lanny Davis and other Clinton surrogates want to play the race game, then so be it. Obama is no racist, nor is he responsible for the inflammatory and seditious statements made by Jeremiah Wright.

Earlier today, I saw a video that has been mentioned by several bloggers on the right, which compares certain passages from Obama’s book and with selected video clips from several of Wright’s sermons. The viewer is led to the conclusion that Obama poses a threat to the country because of his racial beliefs.

The reason that Obama should not be President has nothing at all to do with race, and to spend time on these kinds of tactics won’t defeat him. It ignores the fact that his lack of experience leaves him unprepared to assume the duties of the job. It also ignores the fact that Obama exudes a certain grandiosity that is surpasses mere cockiness and is, well, unseemly, if not dangerous.

Earlier this week at a San Francisco fundraiser, Obama said, “…foreign policy is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Senator Clinton or Senator McCain.”

Oh, please.

After belittling Mrs. Clinton’s experience as First Lady as being ceremonial fluff, Obama went on to say that among the three candidates for President, only he passes the 3 AM Leadership Test. Indeed, he alone possesses “the judgment, the temperament to ask the right questions, to weigh the costs and benefits of military action, who insists on good intelligence, who is not going to be swayed by the short-term politics.” What a piece of work. source

And as for the ultimate foreign policy test, the one John Kerry called, “passing the Global Test,” Obama proposes a diplomatic Manhattan Project of sorts, with Iran’s Mahmoud Amadinejad. The same Ahmadinejad who said today, his country’s objective was to destroy what he called corrupt western powers:

“Our objective is to annihilate all corrupt powers that dominate our planet today,”
source

Iran is building nuclear weapons, and has tested the delivery systems to carry out Ahmadinejad’s objective. If he uses them, he gains favor of his god, and ushers in the End-Times chaos of the 12th Mahdi. If he is in turn incinerated in a retaliatory strike, he gets to spend eternity with 72 virgins. He wins either way.

Taking a college trip to Pakistan, living in Indonesia for four years as a child, and having poor relatives in Africa has convinced Obama that he has the necessary gravitas to engage in foreign policy on behalf of the world’s only superpower.

Jeremiah Wright is the least of his problems.

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The audacity of chutzpah.

After 20 years of church membership, Senator Gravitas now claims he had no idea of the anti-American, leftist hate speech from his pastor,

“None of these statements were ones I had heard myself personally in the pews,” Obama told FOX News. “Once I saw them I had to be very clear about the fact that these are not statements that I am comfortable with. I reject them completely they are not ones that reflect my values or my ideals.”

Right.

Are we back to parsing statements, and redefining the meaning of “is?”

Better yet, why don’t we just define what Obama is lying about.

If in fact he never heard Wright’s hate-filled sermons, it simply means that he wasn’t in attendance on the numerous times that Wright went on a rant.

But, it doesn’t mean that Senator Gravitas wasn’t aware of Wright’s words, or his separatist views. And it doesn’t explain why he waited until now to disavow Wright.

It simply means he never heard it from the pews. And frankly, that’s just not good enough.

It’s clever, but not clever enough.

Ok Hillary, the ball is teed it up for you. If you don’t slap this sucker baldheaded, then you don’t deserve the nomination.

Bob’s Bites asks, Is Obama Lying?

He expects us to believe, that in twenty years of attending the same church, he never knew his pastor hated America. I find it hard to believe he didn’t know about the hatred Rev. Wright has for America. This man preaches about America spreading HIV to blacks on purpose, planning Sept. 11, 2001, and preaches God Damn America. How in the world can Obama not have heard about this in 20 years of attending this church.

Update : The Smoking Gun ….. In a story by the NYT [ screenshot ] dated March 6, 2007, Jeremiah Wright recalls a telephone conversation with Obama. In that call, Obama explains why it was necessary to distance himself from Wright.

“You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we’ve decided is that it’s best for you not to be out there in public.”

That clanging sound you hear is the sound of all four tires flying off the Obamagasm Express.

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Update : Obama campaign throws Wright under the bus. But, MSNBC is not above a little moral equivalence, comparing Wright’s hate speech with recent comments by Geraldine Ferarro…

Wright was the latest in a series of advisers to Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., who have stepped aside as supporters of both candidates trade racially charged accusations.

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Update : Youtube pulls the Wright “G-D America” video (h/t velvethammer)

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From SNL’s TV Funhouse …. (Coke spew warning)

I liveblogged the Democrat debate in Ohio two weeks ago, but several statements from the previous debate in Austin, especially some comments by Sen. Obama, have stuck in my mind, kind of like an annoying jingle that just won’t go away. This is from the transcript, (source CNN)

…the question is, on the critical issues that we face right now, who’s going to show the judgment to lead? And I think that on every critical issue that we’ve seen in foreign policy over the last several years — going into Iraq originally, I didn’t just oppose it for the sake of opposing it.

I said this is going to distract us from Afghanistan; this is going to fan the flames of anti-American sentiment; it’s going to cost us billions of dollars and thousands of lives and overstretch our military. And I was right.

Obama went on to say, “I was right“ several more times, especially regarding the war in Iraq, which he called “the most important foreign policy issue of our generation.“

In March of 2003, Operation Iraqi Freedom was begun after a year of military buildup, and many UN speeches and Security Council resolutions, all of which was met with defiance by Saddam H.

Shortly thereafter, Libya initiated a dialog when it requested Britain to broker talks with the US on WMDs. A US-led naval operation in October 2003 interdicted a shipment of uranium-enrichment components bound for Libya, resulting in the seizure of thousands of uranium centrifuge parts. This seizure prompted Libya to make its pledge to dismantle weapons of mass destruction. Libya allowed US inspectors to visit weapons sites, which were more advanced than Washington previously thought.

Without the aggressive use of force in Iraq in 2003, we would now be facing a nuclear armed Libya.

On Afghanistan and Pakistan, Obama said… “I’ve said very clearly that we have put all our eggs in the Musharraf basket. That was a mistake. We should be going after al Qaeda and making sure that Pakistan is serious about hunting down terrorists, as well as expanding democracy.

And I was right about that.

On the issues that have come up that a commander in chief is going to have to make decisions on, I have shown the judgment to lead.

I’m not sure where Obama would have staged the military buildup for an Afghan campaign. Pakistan was not our ally at the time. Musharraf was the only player in the theater. After the naval seizure of the Libyan nuclear shipment, and responding to mounting US pressure, Musharraf began two months of investigations which concluded that two of Pakistan’s top nuclear scientists, A.Q. Khan and Mohammed Farooq had supplied sensitive technology to Iran and Libya and North Korea through a black market based in Dubai.

Without the aggressive use of force in Iraq in 2003, the A.Q. Khan network would have continued supplying nuclear weapons technology to our enemies.

And, without the aggressive use of force in 2003, Saddam H. would have continued to defy UN sanctions, continued to pursue WMDs, continued to reward Palestinian suicide bombers, continued to fire on coalition aircraft which were patrolling the “no-fly” zone, etc, etc, etc.

And yet, Senator Obama claims to be “right” on the most important foreign policy issue of this generation.

I know it is unrealistic to expect the media to draw him out this, but if the Republicans fail to do so, then they deserve to lose this election.

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(thank you to the excellent resource globalsecurity.org )