Spent all day doing democracy as a poll inspector (aka supervisor.) Given all that is happening it was a little surreal to be working in a place so out of the way that there was NO cellphone reception.
And I tell you, I had to check a couple of disgruntled or shall I say freaked out white voters in this virtually all white extremely affluent precinct. Their spontaneous resentment eruptions about Obama winning the nomination and their outrage over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright issue expressed as they talked with friends …

I don’t believe that Rev. Jeremiah Wright intentionally kicked off the Jeremiah Wright Show Tour to deliberately “hurt” Barack Obama. Now, I don’t think Wright cared if his spectacle had that effect, but I don’t believe that was Wright’s primary reason for exploding out of silence now. What I see is that Rev.Wright saw his legacy of decades of service boiled down into nasty, seconds long sound clips which were then dismissed as the “understandable” rants of an angry old black man. Wright, obstinately defensive, decided to take action to …

Well it’s proved true again. Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it. I’ve never backed away from any opportunity to inspire or engage in dynamic often uncomfortable discussions about race in America. Obviously, that’s why I started this blog more than a year ago. Rev. Jeremiah Wright is now catapulted to the forefront of a discussion that is long overdue. But the timing could not be more complicated and perhaps unfortunate for presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

Did you miss it?
Click Here to see the entire interview.

In his interview with Bill Moyers, Jeremiah Wright delivers an uppercut to Barack Obama’s character and in turn his presidential candidacy. I was so wrong about this one. I’d figured that the Obama campaign would benefit from Wright emerging from his self-imposed quiet period and re-framing his big blast sermons in more easily digestible terms. Not so.
BILL MOYERS:
Here is a man who came to see you 20 years ago. Wanted to know about
the neighborhood. Barack Obama was a skeptic when it came to religion.
He sought you out because he knew …

As an Obama supporter, I am disappointed by the results in Pennsylvania. But unlike many others, I don’t think Clinton’s campaign was in any way surprising or out of line with its vitriol. Politics is indeed a contact sport, not for the faint or fuzzy of heart. I watched Hillary Clinton in an interview with Ann Curry the other night. And Clinton said, point blank, “I have to win.” That’s clarity. She did not say she has to make the country better, she did not say she wanted to inspire …

From The United Church of Christ website:
Jeremiah Wright to be interviewed by Bill Moyers
In what will be his first interview since snippets of his preaching became a central issue in the U.S. presidential campaign, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. will speak publicly to veteran journalist and fellow UCC member Bill Moyers.
The interview will be broadcast on Friday evening, April 25, on Bill Moyers Journal, a PBS news series that airs nationally. Check local listings at www.pbs.org/moyers.
Wright retired in March after 36 years as senior …

In the winter of 2004, a source first told me that the Federal government had sanctioned testing an AIDS vaccine on mostly black and Latino foster children ages 1 month to late teens. I did not believe it. When finally convinced that it was true, I sobbed openly as we walked through the park. I had only the back of my hand to wipe my eyes and my nose, but I didn’t care. I was so enraged and so impotent. It was excruciating and useless to have this knowledge because …

I had pretty much moved on from posting about the Clinton campaign. There is enough vitriol connected to the Democratic party’s presidential primaries. I didn’t feel the need to add to it. But then this morning there’s another headline illustrating the Clinton campaign’s particular obsession with pushing the most negative racial issues even as much of the general population appears to have settled down.

We are all so much more than sound bites. And I would say judging by Obama’s latest poll numbers, the public is becoming more savvy about how television news divisions twist information to create whatever impression they most want you to have. Never forget that. There is no neutrality in the news business. Each news producer, anchor or reporter brings his/her view of the world to every piece that airs. That in mind, I have taken time to watch a number of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s sermons in their entirety. And …

Pastor Rod Parsley yells at the top of his lungs protesting “black genocide.”

Whooo. Can you imagine the Fox news loop if Jeremiah Wright had spoken this sermon in the exact same way?
Big Thanks to n-2-me-i-c for passing this on to us!

Religion sure makes for unexpected allies.

(Huckabee starts at 3:39)

You can’t hold the candidate responsible for everything that people around him may say or do,” Huckabee says. “It’s interesting to me that there are some people on the left who are having to be very uncomfortable with what … Wright said, when they all were all over a Jerry Falwell, or anyone on the right who said things that they found very awkward and uncomfortable, years ago. Many times those were statements lifted out of the context of a larger sermon. …

I urge you to watch this speech in its entirety. You will be moved.

We the people of America cannot settle for racial politics as usual. Not this time.

Here is the text of his speech “A More Perfect Union”:
“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”
Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across …

How’s he going to do it? How will Barack Obama reconcile the off-putting excerpts of Jeremiah Wright’s fire breathing oratory with his own peaceful, easy feeling vision of bringing our country together beyond the barriers that have existed since Plymouth Rock?
I think it’s impossible.
Barack Obama’s initial wishy-washy and overly parsed response to Wright’s most incendiary comments placed Obama right back in the box with the other presidential candidates. And that’s the campaign killer as I see it.
It is ironic that Obama until recently was called the “post-racial candidate.” I …

I’ve been away from the keyboard, but I have to address the Jeremiah Wright situation. I should have a post by late day.
What a maddening mess.