What Did You Think?

OK, this speech will work for Barack.  I was with him for quite a while, but he lost me at the end (I want a transcript!).

I don't want to promise that this is what he said, but this is what I heard, in outline, after denunciation of Wright and a dubious linkage of Wright and Obama's grandmother with her stray racist comments.  [Hmm, did Obama choose his grandma?  Or, is his point that he didn't confront his grandmother when he was ten, so he couldn't confront Wright when he was forty?]

- Black people have reasons to be angry about slavery, Jim Crow, and ongoing discrimination;

- Whites have reason to be unhappy with (pre-reform) welfare, affirmative action, busing, and being called a racist for worrying about black crime rates.

- Wright was wrong in both his racial divisiveness and his belief that American society was static, and progress was not occurring. [But is this a generational thing?  Moss, the new minister, is younger than Barack (and about as charismatic) but seemingly cut from the same divisive cloth as Wright.]
.
- whites needed to do more to raise up black schools and black communities.

Wait!  Did he lose a page here - what, if anything is the black community meant to do differently?  [Thank you Matt Drudge - see below]

Then his conclusion left me at sea - he seemed to be saying that, as in elections past, we could ignore race except as a distraction, but that he was committed to discussing it.  Huh?  His new-found commitment seems to be a direct response to this Wright controversy, not something he wanted to do.

And his discussion of healing race relations seemed to be disappear into a talk about health care, jobs, and everything else.  Baffling.

Still, this will slide him past the Dem primary voters.  For the general, time will tell.

OH, YEAH!  Obama does summon the Dem dream of working class whites and blacks (and browns and yellows) uniting against their oppressive corporate overlords.

FROM THE TRANSCRIPT (emphasis added):

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

Hmm, in the post-speech commentary I see that Pat Buchanan also missed that call to responsibility.  Let's guess that no one will fault Barack for over-emphasizing that point.

WERE MY QUESTIONS ANSWERED?  Developing...

IMAGINE MY DISAPPOINTMENT AND SURPRISE:  More Victims Studies as part of the path to racial reconciliation made a brief appearance over the weekend but seems to have been dropped.  And my suggested spin - Who better to speak to the Muslim youths emerging from their hate-filled mosques than a man coming from a hate-filled church - never arrived. 

 

Comments

[kim]

It's all the fault of the evil corporations, er, uh, I mean the evil Republicans.
===========================

[Sue]

Tom,

You can get a transcript via Drudge.

[boris]

what, if anything is the black community meant to do differently?

Make demands for government care apply to everybody not just blacks.

[Sue]

I think it was enough so that he can now say let's move on. It was a typical blame everyone but the person progressive speech. His audience will love it. Will it fly in the general? Depends on how well McCain does in the debates. And if both Iraq and the economy play nice with McCain. Otherwise, this fool that preaches racial unity and attends a church that preaches racial divisiveness will be our president.

[MTT]

TM,

The speech was brilliant!

And effective.

The True Believers have now, more so than ever, found the man, the Way, to Redemption.

AmeriKKKA will be no more.

Having damned her, her will save her.

The Narrative continues.

Only better.

Hillary! has lost.

The Democtractic race is over.

There is only now November.

And beyond.

Or not.

Hallelujah!

[Soylent Red]

TM, I disagree.

In typical preachiness, Obamessiah told white America that:

a. Wright's rhetoric was understandable, and on some levels, defensible

b. If you don't agree with his vision of the nature and effects of racism, you are part of the problem

c. "Post-racial" means endless discussion of a racism that many whites don't believe exists.

I don't think I'm all that unique. This speech will turn off a lot of white voters who have not already consumed Obamessiah Kool-Aid.

But what do I know? I'm apparently a racist because I don't buy into His garbage.

[PrestoPundit]

I posted this at PrestoPundit:

Obama says this: "[the racial anger against America and against whites of the older generation] is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races."

But note well. Barack Obama continues act to make sure that this anger against whites and against America gets passed along to the next generation, even to his own children, buy putting them in the pews of Rev. Wright's racist church, by bankrolling Wrights anti-white and anti-American ministry, and in the realm of public policy by advocating the expanded teaching of grievance history and victimology in the schools.

And this agenda is not a deviation from the course of Obama's life history. Throughout his life he sought out peers, mentors and teachers -- in college, in his religion and in Chicago -- who also cultivated anger and grievance against America and especially "White America." It's documented in his own autobiography, it's documented in his actions in Chicago. And the facts are not going to go away.

[hrtshpdbox]

"I'm apparently a racist because I don't buy into His garbage."
But you get a pass for at least capitalizing references to Him.

[boris]

Black people have reasons to be angry about slavery, Jim Crow, and ongoing discrimination

And yet are 90% democrat, the party of slavery, the party of Jim Crow, the party that pandered to white privilege, that party that NOW is the party that pandered to minority entitlement. The party that blames rich people (white Republicans) for all that bad stuff.

Maybe the blacks who go for the minority entitlement pandering and shifting blame away from their new benefactors are not as bad as the whites who went for the white privilege and discrimination but putting up with being the target of anger shifted from others is unacceptable. Aint gonna be nobody's scapegoat.

[Soylent Red]

But you get a pass for at least capitalizing references to Him.

PBUH.

[RichatUF]

Speech text

Caught only the end of it. Lifting this from the other thread:

a shot at the Red Witch-

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

2008-23+9=1994. Hillarycare! See what she caused, I bet the Red Witch doesn't like puppies either. The rest of my comment was Cratchet and COBRA...

[GMax]

How historic. Another typical progressive speech where we learn to Blame America and white people for, well everything.

It might get him to the nomination, it will not get him older white voters in rural areas and probably does not get him 1/2 of the Jewish vote.

One more stumble and he ends up making Mcgovern look like an overacheiver.

[Rick Ballard]

"What Did You Think?"

My Mirror of Erised still shows a red diaper lefty race baiting hustler whose total lack of ethical foundation was glaringly apparent from day one.

Maybe I need to listen again?

[MayBee]

There is a history of racism in America, and Wright is stuck in the past. But white people now bear the burden of fixing that.

I want to know why the people in Wright's congregation cheered him so hard if he was stuck in the past. I want to know what they want Obama to do to make them stop standing up and cheering at God damn America.

[kim]

This guy should have spent a little time in the Army; then he might have a clue how far beyond Wright's racism this here country has gotten. This guy got his mother's white guilt in his genes, and bought racist anger from the money in his jeans. He is a mess, actually, a prototypical Prog. A Trotsky to Hillary's Stalin. The pick is halfway through his skull already.
======================

[LibraryLady]

The speech was way too long and became tedious.

I had already read the transcript on Drudge so knew he was going to use the typical excuses. Blame someone else.....

[MayBee]

I'm hearing people talking about how important this speech was. It was a gift to this country, and gives everyone a chance to discuss this.

Where do people live, that this isn't being discussed all the time? Are people afraid of not looking enlightened if they say this was a yawner?

[Sue]

And we still don't know about the "mother" country. And we never will, apparently.

[RichatUF]

Rick-

Maybe I need to listen again?

No you got it the first time.

[Anon]

great-I only caught the end and now the media is telling me what he said-

Starting to go through the transcript that Sue linked to-

At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough."

During this campaign, that's been done to him?

By who?

[Sue]

Are any of you listening to the MSM? The speech is going to be his finest moment, if they have anything to do with it.

[Sue]

ABC radio just described him giving an important speech in the shadow of the Liberty Bell.

[MayBee]

Yes, Sue. People really want to show that they, too, "get" race in America. Finally, someone is addressing it. It is a beautiful moment for all of us, really.

[Anon]

I mean that RichatUF linked too, great I can't even get that right!

[Paul]

I think this speech plays well with the true believers of the Democrats and the nutroots.

But for your average white blue collar worker Democrat or Independent, as well as most Republicans this speech leaves a sick feeling in the your stomach, like just before your're going to barf.

How is your average Joe going to justify to himself and his peers voting for Obama's "its just whitey's fault in the end, whitey just don't understand us black folks" tude.

The guy is a talented speaker and he might have pulled it off if he had stopped one third into this speech. But the last two thirds showed his underlying anger at whites and America with his "we just don't understand him" meme and the divisive Dem talking points accusations.

He is a very smooth, talented speaker, but this speech reinforced my view of him as a con artist trying to put one over on America.

This is not a person who genuinely wants to bring America together.

[Neo]

It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made ..

This is the best line that I found in the speech.

Funny how I got this image in my mind while I was reading it of many, many members of the Democratic Party believing the same thing.

If you didn't .. reading it again and think "surge".

[Sue]

He is not going to further distance himself from his pastor. Why should he? No one knows what his pastor said unless they watch FoxNews. And by linking his pastor and Ferraro together, most people will assume he said nothing more than she did.

[RichatUF]

Lets see if this works:

Thus speakth Obama, "
Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons."

[Rick Ballard]

Rich,

Cheer hate whitey sermons on Sunday, cash Rezko checks on Monday.

BTW - did you catch "long march". Right out of either Gramsci or Mao.

If we're gonna do the "original sin of slavery" bit, could we toss in a reference to the African chiefs who sold their people to those Portugese and Spanish fellas or do we have to pretend that Washington and Jefferson spent their off hours as slave catchers on the Gold Coast?

[Anon]

Sue-

Well it just proves the campaign motto-bad publicity is better than no publicity-

I think Hillary needs to counter with an affair with Bill or somethin'...

I had sex with my husband-news at 11!

[RichatUF]

darn it...can't do colors in typepad:(

[Anon]

I think this is the part where he gets into trouble because somehow now he must know that someone has the "good" on him.

Notice the change here?

Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

[Soylent Red]

long march

Caught that. Bet most people won't though.

[Appalled Moderate]

Obama believes that we in this country have misdirected our anger. Black is angry at white. Middle-class white is angry at black. But our anger really should be directed at:

corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many.

This kind of populism is pure 20th century, Schrum style pablum. The problem I face as a voter is McCain could have delivered the same line. I believe the political system is quite broken, but increased economic regulation is not the best way to fix it.

[RichatUF]

Rick-

Missed that part, but from the transcript, "This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America."

Ouch, wonder who let in that little bit.

[Anon]

Rick-

Err, I'm guessing this option-

or do we have to pretend that Washington and Jefferson spent their off hours as slave catchers on the Gold Coast?

LOL!

[anduril]

``I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community,'' Obama, 46, said today in Philadelphia. ``I can no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother -- a woman who helped raise me.''

I thought this was incoherent and bizarre--does he really value a man whose views are, in his own words, "profoundly distorted," as highly as his own flesh and blood. I'm trying to picture me telling my wife and/or children something like that about some kooky guru, or just anybody who isn't family. But it may be the type of bullshit--love me, love everyone who shares my skin color no matter what--that will fly, especially if the economy distracts people from this issue.

Speaking of which,

Bernanke May Run Low on `Ammunition' for Loans, Rates (Update1)

By Scott Lanman and Rich Miller

March 17 (Bloomberg) -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke may be running out of room to pump money into the financial markets and cut interest rates to rescue the economy.

The Fed has committed as much as 60 percent of the $709 billion in Treasury securities on its balance sheet to providing liquidity and opened the door to more with yesterday's decision to become a lender of last resort for the biggest Wall Street dealers. The central bank has cut short-term rates by 2.25 percentage points since September and will probably reduce them again tomorrow.

``They're using up their ammunition on the liquidity and overnight interest-rate fronts,'' said Lou Crandall, chief economist at Jersey City, New Jersey-based Wrightson ICAP LLC, a unit of ICAP Plc, the world's largest broker for banks and other financial institutions.

...

``There's a limit to how much the Fed can do,'' said Brian Sack, a former Fed research manager, and now senior economist at Macroeconomic Advisers LLC in Washington. ``They've been incredibly aggressive with their balance-sheet policies over the past several weeks, and that has very quickly put this capacity issue in play.''

The actions mean the Fed, and consequently U.S. taxpayers, are assuming additional credit risks. It may also put the central bank closer to the unwanted position of affecting private asset prices, ``a line that they've been reluctant to cross in the past,'' Sack said.

...

The Fed may also decide as early as tomorrow to start outright purchases of mortgage-backed securities, said Vincent Reinhart, former director of the Fed's monetary-affairs decision. Some investors have been clamoring for the Fed to make such a move, and the recent measures fell short of that step.

Pressure on Treasury

The Fed's actions ``absolutely'' put more pressure on the White House and Treasury Department to take further action that would restore ``credibility'' in the mortgage process, said Scott Pardee, former head of foreign-exchange operations at the New York Fed.

The Dow is up on all this speculation, while housing starts are at a 16 year low.

[clarice]

Well, that Schrum style lefty pablum might be more effective if he didn't have that Rezko stuff stuck to the bottom of his shoes and the TP trailing behind him.

[MayBee]

Did Obama mention Reginald Denney?

[Sue]

anduril,

Do you know how to do links? If not, I'm sure someone here can explain it to you.

[Anon]

OK this here is good-in regards to Wright's comments-

Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

But only now does he say it-he did nothing before. He only goes here because he's been made to march to this territory.

[kim]

Right, anon, he's admitted hearing all that carp. 'The Long March' was to catch the ear of any prog who was letting it go in one ear and out the other.

This guy is a tormented mess. Should I feel sorry for him yet?
============================

[Paul]

All I know is that I am getting sick and tired of being told what I have to do for other people who think that I am the devil when I have a hard enough time making ends meet for myself. Not only do I not have any guilt over slavery (here's a clue: I wasn't alive at the time!) but I also do not have any guilt complex because some people, regardless of race, have an entitlement mentality and refuse to get off of their rear ends and do something to alleviate their situation.

For someone who is supposed to oozing hope and change from every pore Obama certainly does have a lot of people around him who do nothing but gripe and repeat the same old cliches that have been around since the late 60s and throughout the 70s.

I guess no man is a prophet in his own close-knit circle.

[Sue]

Some signs that not everyone is feeling it. Obama throwing his white grandmother under the bus while elevating his black preacher is making waves. Stay tuned.

[TexasToast]

Wow. I didn't hear him blame anyone. He repudiated the blame game and suggested we must get past the habit of blame.

This will be a historical piece of rhetoric. You folks are not the target audience.

AM

The shoutout to "populist pablum" should resonate with every democratic voter on the day after an historic fed intervention in an attempt to keep the whole banking system afloat. Interesting how Wall Street (and the rest of us) want "unregulated free markets" when we win, bailouts when we lose.

[Sue]

He repudiated the blame game and suggested we must get past the habit of blame.

Which works well if you don't know he sat in a pew for 20 years listening to a preacher who has never gotten past the blame game and is subjecting his two young children to that same rhetoric. That is truly historic. If you buy is bullshit.

[kim]

One of these days, Anon, he's going to have to confront the 'perverse and hateful ideologies' of the radical left, or of his own church.
========================================

[MayBee]

Sue- exactly. Ann Althouse has a very good take on this.

Missing here, I think, is an explicit acknowledgment that Wright is not merely expressing the anger he feels but that he is leading people into anger, keeping anger fresh and alive.

[kim]

You are right, TT, we were not the target audience; that was self-marginalizing leftists. But that was yesteryear, and yesteryear's gone.

Even in Texas, but not its liberal ghettos.
========================

[clarice]

Not to mention as others, including TM have, that he was financing this hatred and making sure it was passed on to his kids.

[kim]

Obama is doing exactly what his pastor did; keeping anger fresh and alive. Boring, but for the guilty. A lot of America is past this; too bad Obama stayed in an ancient comfort zone.
========================

[kim]

Also, he dug his grave, here. The superdelegates are past all that carp too, and they know their constituents are too. Just how they resolve it, will be fun to watch. They have super work cut out for them.
======================

[Foo Bar]

Wait! Did he lose a page here - what, if anything is the black community meant to do differently?

Have another look at the transcript:

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

[TexasToast]

Well Sue

I grew up listening to my white grandmother say the very same things that Obama's grandmother said. I heard it for more than twenty years. Should I have repudiated her?

I think not.

The kids have largely already transcended identity politics. This stuff is noise to them. It's us older folks, like Rev. Wright, who plow the same old furrows.

[Anon]

OK this is rich-

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

First of all who controls the urban areas?

Democrats.

But more importantly Obama ignored the heat being turned of in one of Rezko's buildings in his own district which the city of Chicago had to sue Rezko to get him to heat the building.

While the court proceeding was going on-during which Rezko said that he didn't have the money to heat the building-Obama accepted a donation from Rezko for $1,000.

Nevermind that Rezko had all kind of problems with his buildings eleven of which were in Obama's state senate district.

[Appalled Moderate]

TT:

I'm not a Paul-bot looking for the end of the Federal Reserve. Government can be good at big actions but is predcatbly horrible at subtle ones. The consequences of the end of Bear Sterns are not what anyone would want to live with.

As for my populist complaint: Politicians all have to have their "other". You know, the nasty people who are responsible for all that is bad. This year isn't much dfferent. On the GOP side, those people tend to be "Illegal Immigrants." On the Dem side, they tend to be Capitalists and those Mexicans who had the misfortune of staying on their own side of the border.

Snce even Reagan and FDR had their "enemies" for their rhetorical abuse, I think that this is one of those things you have to live with in politicians. But I don't have to like it.

[Porchlight]

TT, the point that about a zillion people have aleady made is that you can't choose your grandmother. You can (and Obama did) choose your pastor.

The left's wilful misunderstanding of the salient point is getting tiresome. Talk about plowing the same old furrows.

[Rick Ballard]

"bailouts when we lose"

Not everybody here is dumb enough to understand the precise nature of the "bailout", TT. Perhaps you could explain the advantage which accrued to the Bear Stearns officers, employees and stockholders by the Fed's actions?

Take your time.

[RichatUF]

TexasToast-

This will be a historical piece of rhetoric. You folks are not the target audience.

More brilliant than Cicero. What have I been thinking all this time?

[anduril]

Links like this Bernanke May Run Low on `Ammunition' for Loans, Rates or like this U.S. Stocks Gain on Goldman, Lehman Earnings, Fed Speculation?

U.S. stocks rallied the most in a week after Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. posted earnings that beat estimates and investors speculated the Federal Reserve will slash interest rates.

...

``It restores some confidence that the Street is not in nuclear meltdown,'' said Peter Sorrentino, who helps manage $15 billion at Huntington Asset Management in Cincinnati. ``There are some firms impacted but we're still talking about profits.''

...

U.S. financial stocks are getting closer to ``bottoming out,'' analysts at Morgan Stanley said, trimming their sell positions in Citigroup and National City Corp.

``We view the banks as vulnerable to the credit cycle, with Fed rate cuts only a partial offset,'' the analysts, led by Nigel Dally, wrote in a report to clients. ``But some of these risks are now in the stocks.''

Financial shares tumbled to their lowest level in almost five years yesterday on concern Wall Street's biggest firms may be overvalued following the $2-a-share takeover of Bear Stearns Cos. by JPMorgan.

[Sue]

anduril,

So you already know how, you just choose to disrupt threads with long posts that are not on topic.

[Soylent Red]

But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family.

Translation: I don't begrudge you your handouts and irrational victim mentality, just so long as I get mine.

And just when, during the course of his 20 year relationship, has Obama demanded

more from our fathers

Was it when he was praising Wright publicly or just when he was donating heavily?

Oh! Maybe it was when he was subjecting his children to Wright's vitriol in order to teach them

that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism

Lying sack of sh*t...

[Anon]

One more thing-

It took Reagan to get a Justice Department that would even start to go after the corruption of Chicago that is Rezko.

[Neo]

If we're gonna do the "original sin of slavery" bit, could we toss in a reference to the African chiefs who sold their people to those Portugese and Spanish fellas or do we have to pretend that Washington and Jefferson spent their off hours as slave catchers on the Gold Coast?

I've stories of African Americans returning to the Ivory Coast or Liberia only to find out for the first time that their forefathers were sold into salvery by their own tribal leaders. They tell stories of them breaking down and crying that they were never told the truth.

As for slavery, there are more slaves in the world today than at any point in human history. Who are they to blame ?

[Soylent Red]

Anon:

Where's the reference for that Rezko slumlord story you mentioned.

That stuff is golden...

[Great Banana]

I think people miss the point when they claim Obama does not want to be a "uniter" b/c he embraces racism a la Wright.

The "unity" he is promising is much like the "bi-partisanship" or "compromise" or "moderation" encouraged by the mainstream media and democrats generally.

It means that conservatives will give up their arguments and policy positions and accept liberalism as correct and right.

Once conservatives have seen the light, there will be "unity" and "bi-partisanship".

[Pofarmer]

But what do I know? I'm apparently a racist because I don't buy into His garbage.

Join the club.

[PeterUK]

This little revolving turd we live on is about to hit the celestial fan and all the putative leaders of the world can do is play with themselves.
Can none of them address the enormous financial problems which are,even now,breaking over our heads.No matter what solution there is to "climate change",hot or cold either way,there will not be the money to finance it.

[Sue]

Great Banana,

You are right.

[Pofarmer]

Ya know, as long as blacks identity of themselves continues to start with slavery, we're always gonna be in 1866.

[Laddy]

Didn't he admit he heard Wright say outrageous things he disagreed with, but at the same time didn't have the stones to confront Wright. He still subjected his own children to this speech, did he not? I don't think this will do him any good with the people who have already taken notice of his emptiness. I didn't hear him really take any personal responsibility for anything. I heard him lay off the fault with just about everything and everyone else.

[ARC: Brian]

The kids have largely already transcended identity politics. This stuff is noise to them. It's us older folks, like Rev. Wright, who plow the same old furrows.

"George Bush hates Black people!" - Kanye West (31)

Yep, just the older folks....

ARC: Brian

[ARC: Brian]

Oops! Kanye is 30, he won't be 31 till June. My bad.

ARC: Brian

[ARC: Brian]

Oops again.. LOL so much for a pithy response. The actual quote was: "George Bush doesn't care about black people."

Close enough.

ARC: Brian

[anduril]

Perhaps I have a more expansive view of what's on topic. If you disagree, I suggest you hit the page down key or scroll past.

You could begin with this:

Counterproductive Solutions to the Credit Crisis

John Tammy, editor of RealClearMarkets, has an article that gets as close as I've seen to a global explanation of what's going on in the financial markets, and what it holds in store for us. We'll likely hear much more about this during the next seven and a half months:

In his economic treatise Human Action, Ludwig Von Mises made the basic, but important point that “Monetary calculation is the guiding star of action under the social system of division of labor.” ...

Von Mises of course wrote his essential book amidst the Bretton Woods era when the world enjoyed the relative stability of the dollar standard; the dollar linked to a fixed gold price of $35/ounce. Since the U.S.’s mistaken decision in 1971 to leave the gold standard, money, previously insignificant except as a facilitator of the all important beneficial exchange of goods, has become a distortive variable in commerce. Though it was once the “compass of the man embarking on production,” the gyrations of currencies today often retard production and trade due to the mal-investment that frequently results when money values lurch in either direction.

...

Moving to September of 2001, the tragedy that was 9/11 set in motion the dollar’s escape from deflationary territory. With the world a much riskier place due to terror fears, the dollar price of gold began to rise in such a way that companies benefited from a reduction in their real debts. The latter moderation of dollar strength combined with the 2003 Bush tax cuts led to a rising economy and stock market by the spring of 2003.

The problem by 2003 was that neither the Bush Treasury nor the Greenspan Fed communicated to the markets any kind of desire for a stable dollar price. Worse, increased terror fears in concert with a Bush Administration that seemingly welcomed a weaker greenback (as evidenced by tariffs on steel/lumber/shrimp alongside a protectionist stance against China) turned the dollar reflation into an eventual dollar rout.

As the dollar weakened, a reverse of what happened in the late ‘90s occurred. The falling dollar led to what Von Mises referred to as a “flight into real goods.” Commodities are of course priced in dollars, and with the latter sagging, commodities, including housing, began an impressive run. Sure enough, an investment in property or gold since 2003 has handsomely outperformed the various equity indices over the same timeframe.

But just as investment can be distorted amidst a rising currency, the same can occur when the currency is losing value. Profits attract capital, and with housing and commodities on their aforementioned run, savers and equity investors lost out as capital was redeployed to the “real.” Furthermore, as Keynes pointed out, amidst devaluation the "practice of borrowing from banks is extended beyond what is normal."

The above is what we experienced in recent years, and much as markets eventually corrected for mal-investment in the equity sector during the strong-dollar equity boom, home prices have moderated in recent times as markets corrected for the money illusion wrought by a weak dollar. The problem today is that unlike what happened after the stock-market collapse earlier in the decade, the federal government is going out of its way to soften the economic impact.

...

What’s clear is that taxpayer dollars are now being deployed to allegedly normalize the impact of the economy’s slowdown on consumers, homeowners, and now banks. The irony here is that economies are most reliant on capital to grow, but with politicians ever eager to access the money of others to show “compassion,” hundreds of billions of dollars will be siphoned away from the productive economy to fund the short-term and counterproductive desires of the political class.

All of which brings us to President Bush, Treasury Secretary Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke. Though all profess to having free-market leanings, they’ve crafted solutions that will slow the economy’s recovery through retardation of the price-discovery process. Worse, their solutions are the equivalent of a doctor performing plastic surgery on a patient in need of heart surgery. The dollar’s lurch downward in recent years to a high degree explains the dislocations we’re experiencing today, yet to a man, neither Bush nor Paulson nor Bernanke seems concerned in the least about the dollar’s fall.

They should be concerned. Due to its status as the world’s reserve currency whereby two out of three dollars are overseas, the greenback’s value is the most important price in the world. When it’s in freefall, investment distortions and the economic calamities of the likes we’ve witnessed always result. And just as the picture of Senator Reed Smoot and Representative Willis Hawley to this day is symbolic of a major legislative mistake (the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act) that brought on a severe economic downturn, we can only wonder if history books in the future won’t frame Bush, Bernanke and Paulson as the architects of non-market solutions to economic problems that turned natural market corrections into something much worse.

[Anon]

Soylent Red-

For more than five weeks during the brutal winter of 1997, tenants shivered without heat in a government-subsidized apartment building on Chicago's South Side.

It was just four years after the landlords -- Antoin "Tony'' Rezko and his partner Daniel Mahru -- had rehabbed the 31-unit building in Englewood with a loan from Chicago taxpayers.

Rezko and Mahru couldn't find money to get the heat back on.

But their company, Rezmar Corp., did come up with $1,000 to give to the political campaign fund of Barack Obama, the newly elected state senator whose district icluded the unheated building.

There's more at the link including-Obama's admission that he did the "routine" to address his constituent's concerns.

Wait-Obama doesn't answer the reporters, it is a written response by one of his staff.

Chicago Suntimes

[Tom Maguire]

Thank you Foo Bar. Now that I see it I can almost remember tuning out with the glass ceiling bit - I was wondering if he was about to endorse Hillary, or suggest her as his VP.

[Bill in AZ]

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.

Methinks his righteous anger is directed at the wrong folks. It was enlightened liberal fascists who implemented all of these wonderful programs (he forgot minimum wage), and the very specific purpose at the time was eugenics - get rid of the poor, the stupid. Eugenics was a big thing among the progressive "elites" at the time, and both Hitler and Mussolini mused that America was far ahead of them in progressive thought - that is, until Hitler took things a bit too far. Eugenics went down the memory hole of lib-thought - but the programs it created remain today. See "Liberal Fascism" for an interesting treatment of this.

And he wants to strengthen and lead the party who's ideological ancestors created this source of anger in the first place...

[Ranger]

Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes.

Funny that Obama managed to hide this deep inside his speech. Isn't this an outright admission that he's been lying to eveyone for the last few days?

[Anon]

The irony-

In this speech Obama laments about building code violations-

Then there is this from the same Chicago Suntimes article talkig about Rezko's buildings eleven of which were in Obama's district-

Rezko and Mahru also managed the buildings, which were supposed to provide homes for poor people for 30 years. Every one of the projects ran into trouble:

• Seventeen buildings -- many beset with code violations, including a lack of heat -- ended up in foreclosure.

btw-it was the small firm that Obama worked for that secured over 43 million in government funding for Rezko.

[Neo]

spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism

So who exactly refers to doing good in school as being "too white" ?

[TexasToast]

TT, the point that about a zillion people have aleady made is that you can't choose your grandmother. You can (and Obama did) choose your pastor.

Porchlight

You can also choose not to abandon your friends when they do (or say) stupid things, but attempt to move the conversation beyond their petty prejudices. This "rejecting and denouncing" business is getting ridiculous.

McCain's "spiritual guides" have their own scare quotes. So what?

Rick

The BS takeover was not a bailout - it was a bankruptcy sidestep to avoid losing an important piece of the banking system. But it is by no means the only firm in trouble.

The majority of the stockholders of BS were exposed to "moral hazard". But BS is just the tip of the iceberg. There is lots of overvalued paper out there, and a "rescue" of the firms and not the borrowers ain't too politically smart.

[boris]

Nobody is asking Obama to reject and denounce the pastor, it just reveals a bit more about who he is. I don't demand he change, just glad to know what I now know.

Race hate is no big deal among his "friends", but any deviation from ultraPC from Geraldine and others is unacceptable.

[Neo]

Meanwhile back at the ranch ..

John McCain's 67% favorable rating is the highest of any of the three major candidates running for president, and ties for his highest in Gallup polling history.

[MayBee]

You can also choose not to abandon your friends when they do (or say) stupid things, but attempt to move the conversation beyond their petty prejudices.

I want to know why an old black man that grew up in a more racist time was talking about the chickens coming home to roost on 9/11 because of our foreign policies.
This is a man that has gone to Libya and Syria.
Obama is a man who has said he doesn't want the US to appear to stand above other countries, so he will meet with Iran (and Syria, etc).

I wanted Obama to specifically address the anti-Americanism coming from his church. I want him to tell me how he sees America in the world.

He talked about Ashley and the age of his minister.

[Ralph Phelan]

I didn't hear the whole thing, as I punched my radio button in disgust right after he compared his grandmother to Reverent Wright.

(1) His grandmother has prejudices that she tries to hide. Wright makes his living spreading them to a 4000 person audience on a weekly basis.

(2) "The US government is spreading AIDS to kill black people" is more than just your run-of-the-mill prejudice. It's a blood libel.

[Sue]

One thing Obama taught me today...

Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect.

...as long as I treat blacks I interact with with respect, it doesn't matter what I say about them when they aren't listening.

[Sue]

You can also choose not to abandon your friends when they do (or say) stupid things, but attempt to move the conversation beyond their petty prejudices. This "rejecting and denouncing" business is getting ridiculous.

When did he attempt to move the reverend beyond his prejudices, petty or otherwise? I agree, this rejecting and denouncing is getting ridiculous. Especially when you don't mean it.

[Ranger]

Well, if Clinton is smart she will avoid the race issue and paint this as yet another example of Obama hiding his admissions in a flood of pretty words. He admitted that he lied when he claimed he'd never heard the type of things on the tapes. Just like he's been slowly admitting more and more about Rezko, only when he couldn't pretend any more. This is just part of his pattern of evasion.

[Porchlight]

You can also choose not to abandon your friends when they do (or say) stupid things, but attempt to move the conversation beyond their petty prejudices.

Sorry if I wasn't clear. The point is that Wright is a chosen long-term friend, mentor and associate of Obama's. Not an accident of birth, such as a grandmother would be.

Therefore the association tells us something about Obama, as boris points out. So denunciations and repudiations aside, to ask Obama why he chose this friend - and stuck with him all these years - is perfectly valid.

[Sue]

You can also choose not to abandon your friends when they do (or say) stupid things, but attempt to move the conversation beyond their petty prejudices. This "rejecting and denouncing" business is getting ridiculous.

When did he attempt to move the reverend beyond his prejudices, petty or otherwise? I agree, this rejecting and denouncing is getting ridiculous. Especially when you don't mean it.

[J. Peden]

As per anon, Obama:

Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

Yes, anon, as were others I was just thinking the same thing about someone having "the goods" on B.O., because he's admitting he's heard what he has also said he has not heard from Wright, then claims this sort of racist, America-damning and blaming invective is endemic within everyone's Church or Synagogue, trying to further cover his eloquent-sounding ass.

Then he claims he's just the one who will work to resolve it, while having no actual record of doing this unitey thing anywhere whatsoever, including within his own Church. [In contrast to McCain's experience and often disparaged bipartisanship.]

So Hillary has to work on the "lie" aspect and produce another "Monica".

Then Obama also has apparently reversed himself in referencing Israel and Islamofascism, as you[?] also quote:

a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

Which makes his stategic surrender plan concerning the WOT and Iraq's obvious place in it irrational.

Enter McCain again. As I recall, McGovern was quite a good speaker himself in touting post-Classical Liberalism - "bring us together" was even one of his main mottos, etc.. Nixon was not a good speaker. 49-1.

Oh well, I suppose Obama and his merry band of pacifist deathworshippers will wow the polar opposite - as to application - deathworshipping Islamofascists as well. And we do always have Nuclear annihilation of Islamofascists, enc., et collateral, as a back up.

[Ralph Phelan]

What gall!

"lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement –"

cough*Rezko*cough

[michaelt]

What do I think?

That five weeks from today, Hillary! still could win Pennsylvania.

And then....?

[Ranger]

Well, the more I think about it, the more I think this speech was an effort to admit he lied in a way that he could then claim that anybody who points that fact out is "playing the race card." This admission on his part is big because it is exactly the "politics as usual" the he claims he wants to change. Never admit guilt until you have to, then pretend what you did was about something completely different.

[Ralph Phelan]

What gall!

"lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement...."

cough*Rezko*cough

[Ranger]

Well, the more I think about it, the more I think this speech was an effort to admit he lied in a way that he could then claim that anybody who points that fact out is "playing the race card." This admission on his part is big because it is exactly the "politics as usual" the he claims he wants to change. Never admit guilt until you have to, then pretend what you did was about something completely different.

[Jane]

Well, the more I think about it, the more I think this speech was an effort to admit he lied in a way that he could then claim that anybody who points that fact out is "playing the race card."

I was just thinking that. In his interviews he said he never heard that stuff. In his speech he said he did. Lots of parsing available there.

So his supporters stay in the flock and his detractors including those freaked out recently by the Reverend, are not persuaded. He nets nothing.

So far my favorite analysis comes from Kathryn Jean Lopez:

The more I think about this speech, the more I think Obama said: Damn straight, Rev. Wright is angry. That's how I wound up at his church. That's why I stay there. I'm mad too, I just control it better. Now let's get electing me president so we can all feel good.

[PeterUK]

Great speech for 1968 unfortunately 2008 is more like 1928 with overtones of 1938.

[Ranger]

Well, it looks like ABC is going to keep up the fire on this. Their top of the hour news break started with the exact quote. The sound bite went on, but the first thing people heard on the radio out of Obama's mouth was his admission that he lied. They didn't point it out directly, but that's what they want people know from the story.

My bet is that the next conference call the Clinton people have with reporters they ask why the press isn't asking Obama why it took him 5 days to admit the truth.