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’nuff said.

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JMO, and of course other are free to totally discount a candidate’s religious association.

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And it should be obvious that there will be differences of outcome among those who DO consider religious association, and see exactly the same association. For example, those who subscribe to Black Liberation Theology would be inclined to vote for a candidate that they believed embraced the same or similar theology.

Levi – Based on his actions since the speech, That is exactly what it turned out to be. Obama has had something like eight positions on Wright. I would call that pandering for political expediency as opposed to taking a principled stand, but you have blinders on so you will call it something else. Take a look at the vast library of Wright clips out there Levi, if you dare, instead of repeating your ridiculous mantra about two minutes of clips. Your juvenile defense of Obama’s poor judgement is laughable since it changes from comment to comment. You are the individual who raised the first amendment separation issue and then said nobody was talking about it in your next comment.

Moron.

He is a talentless hack without an ounce of character, a shadow puppet whose strings are pulled by probably the most capable, sophisticated and corrupt political machine in the country.

I posted that way above, at # 18. “I think Obama is a huckster and opportunist. I’m not sure he REALLY buys the black liberation theology schtick, but he found an opportunity in associating with it.”

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The fact that you find the positions of Robertson, et al “of interest” proves my point, that the religious affiliation of a candidate is a topic of interest. I hear you trying to “shoo” people away from that consideration in the case of Obama, and that’s certainly your prerogative. You can even assign “propaganda-chugging, group-thinking idiot” to me, if you want.

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– You’d rather just go with “informed speculation.” Based entirely on 2 minutes of somebody else giving speeches. –

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You’re a real hoot. I can spot a carnival barker at 100 yards. Obama is one, Huckabee is one, etc. The list is pretty long. “Entirely on 2 minutes of somebody else” Hahahahah!!!! Negative, grasshopper.

A couple of points. First, religious association has been “an issue” in presidential elections before. Obama isn’t “the first.” JFK was “the first Catholic,” and at the time it was a significant issue in the campaign. In this election cycle, Romney’s association with the Mormon church was/is a significant issue; and Huckabee’s close association with the church (he’s a pastor) is a non-trivial consideration.

This is different. Nobody is talking about Obama’s Christianity, people are calling him a whitey-hating Communist because an entirely different human being said some things, and since Obama went to that guy’s church, well then he must agree with all of them. That’s an impossible and unprecedented standard, and you know it.

So, it’s not odd or unusual or “needless digging for dirt” that people would (and I think SHOULD) have an interest in the messages promulgated by the churches that the current candidates attend. Generally, the candidates belong to “mainstream” churches, meaning that whatever the messages, they aren’t inclined to make much of a political impact one way or the other. To the extent there isn’t political interest in the candidate’s choice of church, it’s because the message of the church is inclusive and peaceful.

I don’t what constitutes ‘mainstream’ to you, but the United Church of Christ has over a million members and 5,000 congregations, and they’re one of the most ‘inclusive and peaceful’ varieties of Christianity in this country, and yes, I would apply those labels to both Rev. Wright and Trinity church.

If it just blows your mind that I can say that, just compare Wright’s, Trinity’s, and the UCC’s welcoming and tolerance of gays compared to the prominent fundamentalist evangelicals which you would likely consider ‘mainstream.’ Pat Robertson’s and Jerry Falwell’s first instinct after 9-11 was to blame the whole thing on gays. To pretend like that sort of message isn’t inclined to have a ‘political impact’ is to be extremely disingenuous, these guys have been king-makers in the Republican party for years. Is that an inclusive, peaceful message? The two guys that McCain sought out this year to campaign for him believe centrally that America was founded to destroy Islam. Rev. Wright has never openly advocated invading other countries, has he? He’s never targeted another religion as an inferior and evil problem that must be eliminated, has he? So whose message is inclusive? Whose message is peaceful?

Save your breath if all you have to say to this is, “Twenty! TWENTY YEARS!”

That being said, Obama’s candidacy is, as far as I recall, the first time a presidential contender chose membership in a church that preaches the theology of Black Liberation. I don’t count Jesse Jackson as a contender, and haven’t looked back to see how his religious affiliation was treated during his run.

Who cares?

Each voter will assign a value to the candidate’s chosen religious affiliation. You are entitled to assign church association as “meaningless” for whatever reason you want, but you aren’t entitled to (nor can you) prevent others from assigning substantial weight to the same factor.

I can call you propaganda-chugging, group-thinking idiots for doing it though, am I entitled to that?

And to assign a low weight to an issue when evaluating a candidate for office, on the basis of some constitutional principle (e.g., “separation of church and state”) doesn’t make any sense to me. I don’t see anybody trying to use the government to stifle free expression. In fact, the opposite. The public wants MORE and HONEST expression in order to attempt to peek into the heart and soul of each candidate.

That isn’t what’s happening, nobody making an issue out of Rev. Wright cares about Obama’s heart and soul. He’s tried to explain himself and defend himself hundreds of times at this point. He wrote his own speech on race, which is quite literally something that never happens in American politics, and Republican quarters greeted it as little more than insincere political pandering. To judge Obama’s ‘heart and soul,’ you people rely exclusively on 2 minutes of Rev. Wright’s sound bites while discounting everything Obama himself has to say. I’m supposed to take your ‘concerns and worries’ seriously when you refuse to take Obama at his word? No thanks.

Nobody forced Barack Obama to join Trinity, and nobody forced him to disassociate himself. He’s making choices of his own free will – and those choices, and his stated rationale for them, are legitimately useful for building informed speculation (because one can never KNOW another’s heart, for sure) about his ultimate principles.

Informed speculation. What. A. Joke. It’s not like we can never know what principles a person holds, what they value. We could ask Obama about his ultimate principals, we could examine what he’s done with his life, what he’s voted for, what jobs he’s taken. We could discuss what he says he would do with the office of the Presidency, and from there, we could gather what his ultimate principals are, but meh. You’d rather just go with ‘informed speculation.’ Based entirely on 2 minutes of somebody else giving speeches. Just like the founding fathers would have wanted! Don’t listen to anything a candidate has to say, just rampantly speculate!

Tell me, smarty-pants, what conclusions has your ‘informed speculation’ lead you to about Obama?

Actually…no.Most, if not virtually ALL of the vetting concerning the very troubling associations, comments, and the content of his “inner circle” of Sen. Obama…have been revealed…by liberal Democrats….or from the words of the candidate himself and his wife.

The NYTImes and Newsweek did articles about the connection to Rev. Wright. Neither has any biased connection with conservatives or Republicans. Quite the contrary.

The “clinging” statement was revealed…at the Huffington blog.

The autobiography that sought to explain his “rise to sainthood” goes into detail about the influence of Wright and why he chose that church over all the others available to him.

a guy whom they have absolutely no argument against,

This is pure idolatry and projection. HILLARY’S argument against him…seems to work quite well in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, Texas. Those were DEMOCRATS who were offended and put off by his statements, associations and positions.

that this ’story’ got nonsensically amplified by right-wingers to the point that Obama is now forced to give every speech and answer every question in terms of his friendship with Rev. Wright.

Again, I find this argument weak and I also find it actually fans the flames of resentment even further. It HURTS Sen. Obama every time he and one of his drooling lackeys spouts it.

It simply doesn’t pass the smell test. Character matters. Worldview matters. Belief system matters. CLOSE associations matter. What you embrace your whole life…helps define you. What you choose to NEVER embrace…helps define you.

Leftists continue to (what now must be considered intentional distortion)suggest that NOBODY is responsible for the words, acts or deeds of another.

Really? Why is Sen. Obama running against President Bush instead of McCain? Why does he try to ASSOCIATE McCain with Bush at every turn? In reality, McCain over the last 20 years has shown SUBSTANTIALLY more distance from Bush…than Sen. Obama has shown from Wright, Pfleger, Ayers & Dorhn, and the Nation of Islam.

It is the depth of the connection, (and conversely, the depth of the association) that EACH side’s voters are vetting and examining. It is seeking the actual worldview and belief system and trying to find how closely it matches in each instance.

Because each side knows…without those people in the center for whom the hard right and the hard left are not appetizing thoughts…that vetting is important. So far, McCain appears to be less hard right…than Obama appears to be hard left.

Conservatives, Reagan Democrats AND INDEPENDENTS will run…flee en masse…from the hard leftist, socialist, Marxist, racist, anti-Semitic ragings of Wright, Pfleger, Farrakhan, Ayers, Dorhn, Ali Abunimah, Edward Said, Chomsky, Malley, McPeak, Brzezinski.

This is how your party works. This is how your party wins, by exploiting fear and stupidity.

Well, the liberal far left have been using fear and stupidity as mother’s milk. Telling everyone that Republicans will take Social Security away from old people, that corporations are evil, that Republicans wish to steal their freedoms.

Leftists have been lying about America for 40 years. Giving away national defense secrets and spying against the country, rooting against the country. They wish to take the country down and make it something else. “Useful idiots” I believe they were called by the very system that used them as dupes.

You can all run around thinking you’ve done something great here, that you’ve disrupted some sneaky politician by finding out some dark, secret truth, but you’re pawns,

Something useful has been done…Sen. Obama and Michelle got a life lesson that I suspect they will long remember. You can’t live your life as a fish and pretend to be a bird.

The company you keep, the company you embrace…help define you. If you hang out with skinheads, you go to church with your arms embraced around David Duke, if you attend Neo-Nazi meetings regularly…and then you try to run as a moderate who loves Jewish people and blacks…nobody is going to believe you.

Those deeds are worth a thousand empty rhetoric stump speeches. No matter how artfully delivered.

The anti-white bile and venom that spews from those pulpits, the marxist hatefest for capitalism and free market enterprise…that matters. And closing your eyes and throwing a tantrum when anyone looks at it…HURTS OBAMA.

It simply exacerbates the feeling that “he has something to hide”. Screaming, screeching, wildly flailing your arms and yelling DON’T LOOK HERE, THERE’S NOTHING TO SEE, MOVE ALONG!!!!!”…well, any litigator will tell you, when a witness does that…THAT’S where the ammo is stashed. Keep digging.

used like toilet paper for your votes, and specifically targeted because you’re especially shrill and uniquely influential.

Inane argument. Conservatives were never going to vote for Obama. Just as hard leftists are never going to vote for McCain. Those votes are set.

The shrill liars are on the left. The reason that this issue has traction…is that Sen. Obama appears to have no answer for it. And it matters…no matter how many tantrums leftists throw saying it doesn’t.

If Obama loses the middle…Reagan Democrats and Independents…he will lose an election that ought to have been a walkover.

The leftists keep screaming about the “vast right wing conspiracy”, made up of “white people, corporate America, and religion clingers”…but, apparently they are too busy screeching to realize …that tantrum is pissing off the very people they need to get their guy elected.

It is NOT enough that Sen. Obama simply NOW try to distance himself from that ugly and pathetic worldview…he needs to explain…satisfactorily…what his attraction to it was for the last 20 years. Why he embraced it in the first place.

How it is any different from Frank Marshall Davis, whom he also embraced. Or his most radical professors.

He can run…but he can’t hide…from his entire past. And yes…for the Bulge and Spittle crowd on the far left…it matters.

The media is supposed to be objective

Bless your naive heart, but among the several functions of the media, NONE of them is “to be objective.” Most of the media organs CLAIM to be objective, but that doesn’t make them so. The “fourth estate” and media objectivity are current myths, used (and effectively so) to manipulate gullible people.
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To the extent one accepts or seeks the media as presenting facts to be adopted as “objective reality,” is an extent one gives up independent judgment. To the extent the public believes the media is objective, the public becomes manipulable at will.
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Not that media never gets it right — but trust them at your own risk.

A couple of points. First, religious association has been “an issue” in presidential elections before. Obama isn’t “the first.” JFK was “the first Catholic,” and at the time it was a significant issue in the campaign. In this election cycle, Romney’s association with the Mormon church was/is a significant issue; and Huckabee’s close association with the church (he’s a pastor) is a non-trivial consideration.

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So, it’s not odd or unusual or “needless digging for dirt” that people would (and I think SHOULD) have an interest in the messages promulgated by the churches that the current candidates attend. Generally, the candidates belong to “mainstream” churches, meaning that whatever the messages, they aren’t inclined to make much of a political impact one way or the other. To the extent there isn’t political interest in the candidate’s choice of church, it’s because the message of the church is inclusive and peaceful.

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That being said, Obama’s candidacy is, as far as I recall, the first time a presidential contender chose membership in a church that preaches the theology of Black Liberation. I don’t count Jesse Jackson as a contender, and haven’t looked back to see how his religious affiliation was treated during his run.

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Each voter will assign a value to the candidate’s chosen religious affiliation. You are entitled to assign church association as “meaningless” for whatever reason you want, but you aren’t entitled to (nor can you) prevent others from assigning substantial weight to the same factor.

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And to assign a low weight to an issue when evaluating a candidate for office, on the basis of some constitutional principle (e.g., “separation of church and state”) doesn’t make any sense to me. I don’t see anybody trying to use the government to stifle free expression. In fact, the opposite. The public wants MORE and HONEST expression in order to attempt to peek into the heart and soul of each candidate.

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Nobody forced Barack Obama to join Trinity, and nobody forced him to disassociate himself. He’s making choices of his own free will – and those choices, and his stated rationale for them, are legitimately useful for building informed speculation (because one can never KNOW another’s heart, for sure) about his ultimate principles.