Agreed. Everyone should have stopped paying attention to this guy long ago, right around when he decried the Clinton presidency as being worse for blacks than Jim Crow.

Preach it, brother.

This is just drawing people's attention away from the more relevant issue of whether Barack Obama is the Hamburglar Antichrist.

3

Really...Obama being (half) black, isn't the 'burglar option more likely?

Your post is right and if I weren't already sold on Obama as president this speech would have done it.

This is why I keep coming back to this site. Nicely said.

Holy shit. This is the first of his speeches I've heard or read, and there were a few parts that literally took my breath away. Those rumors about his being an unusually gifted orator might be true after all.

Video of the Obama speech

Interesting that he mentions "your priests, ministers, or rabbis", but not your imams. Guess he can't afford to go near the M-word. And he even decries "radical Islam".

Jeremiah Wright was impolitic, used inflammatory phrasing, and was certainly unhelpful to Obama's campaign, but he wasn't in any sense wrong.

Even this?

"The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied."

Well, sure, you can find things he's said that are crazy. See point #1 in the post; he's a preacher. But that wasn't one of the ones I was hearing all over the news.

Nothing's perfect, but Barack is close. His superb speech will no doubt attract further infantilism from the parsers who think bush is smart and war is good and guns make people polite.
It won't stop the intransigently rabid section of the MSM either but perhaps, just perhaps, this time the majority of Americans will see through the propaganda/subterfuge and recognise a good man, an intelligent man, a sane man.
He should be in everybody's prayers.

I also see Obama as "a good man, an intelligent man, a sane man." I also see him as a candidate less set in his ways and less beholden to special interests than Clinton and McCain.

But he also seriously misdiagnoses racial and economic problems and the role of government in them. Black communities and inner cities would be stronger, with better schools and greater opportunity, if we put an end to a "drug war" that, like Prohibition, turns the supply chain and users into criminals, eliminates any police protection for economic activity - except that purchased through corruption - and puts 10% of the black population behind bars. The right way to solve problems of lack of equal opportunity is to end government interference - not to federalize schools or force suburban schools to accept inner city kids.

And yes, firms move their low wage jobs abroad, but it`s comp@arative advantage that made our country wealthy to begin with. What we need is FREER trade, not less of it. We need to end corporate welfare in the form of import quotas and duties, and federal subsidies for domestic sugar and ethanol. These keep prices high here and keep cheaper producers - countries struggling to develop - poor.

Obama hasn`t begun to properly diagnose these structural problems.

Yeah, what Wright says isn't much crazier than what Falwell said, and LESS crazy that Hagee, who has been skipping one too many of his thorazine doses.

Actually I wish more people would have the guts to say what Wright said, especially about the CIA-cocaine trafficking connections, brought to light in part by none other than John Kerry.

Oh yeah, and by the way, Jesus loves ALL of you, including all you atheist Poo-Pooblers who think you're such hot s***.

Alright - just what DID Wright say that has knickers twisted on the right?

"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people," he said in a 2003 sermon. "God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

Will you all shut the fuck up about Obama's pastor?! Everytime I hear this crap, I get very pissed off because all that pastor is doing is telling the truth about this nation! Now dammit, put on your rading eyes and shut the hell up!