Video of Obama Speech

Text of Obama Speech

HuffPo: Obama Race Speech: Read The Full Text

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

I had two white grandmothers that this speech described to a T -- revered and flawed.

Media Giving McCain Another Free Pass

Rod Parsley (photo via Evangelical Right)


Columbia Journalism Review: Rod Parsley’s Free Pass
Jeremiah Wright gets torched, while McCain’s “spiritual adviser” offends with impunity

Both Barack Obama and John McCain have religious allies who have made controversial, and sometimes flat-out offensive, public statements. But the media have treated them very differently.

[]

Meanwhile, John McCain has a Christian ally of his own. At a rally in late February, McCain appeared with Rod Parsley, the pastor of an Ohio mega-church, and called him a “spiritual guide.”

Parsley has his own history of controversial statements. As David Corn reported this week for Mother Jones, Parsley has called for Christians to wage war against the “false religion” of Islam, in order to destroy it. He does not distinguish between Islamic extremists and ordinary Muslims. “What some call ‘extremists’ are instead mainstream believers who are drawing from the well at the very heart of Islam,” he has written.

And it’s not just Muslims he’s got it in for. Last year, Parsley’s organization called for people who commit adultery to be prosecuted, and in January he compared Planned Parenthood to the Nazis.

But the press has largely shrugged off the Parsley story. I couldn’t find one mainstream American news outlet that has so much as mentioned Parsley’s extremist views since McCain appeared publicly with him in late February.

McCain has the media eating out of his hand.

Bush's Economic House of Cards Collapsing

What, me worry?
U.S. President George W. Bush Alfred E. Neuman addresses the Economic Club of New York March 14, 2008. Bush, on a drive to bolster faith in the U.S. economy amid fears of a recession, said the economy was resilient and would regain its strength despite the hard times.
REUTERS/Lucas Jackson (UNITED STATES)

Yesterday, while the cable networks tried hard to get us to believe that Barack Obama's pastor was an America-hating black separatist who would bring him down in November (Bread and Circus here! Pay no attention to the real news!), the Bush economy was collapsing.

Bush gave a classic President Pissypants speech to the Economic Club of New York, complete with shouting intonation, much face making, and the obligatory reference to 9/11 (third paragraph). (A great piece on Bush's incoherent speech in today's New York Times by Gail Collins.) Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Fed was giving away $200 million of taxpayer money to a big bank.

Let's give that last point a separate paragraph. The Fed gave away $200,000,000 -- Two Hundred Million Dollars --to a big bank. In return, the Fed got a bunch of worthless paper.

Bear Stearns, like most large U.S. financial institutions, owns lots of subprime mortgages; Bear Stearns subprime mortgages were purchased with borrowed money, no less. Bush and Greenspan let subprime mortgages (no money down! no income verification! flip this house! etc.) mushroom over the last eight years. They're worthless as the buyers can't make the payments, and the properties weren't worth the ridiculous prices they were going for, so they're going to default and the bank is left holding the bag. But no! The Fed has picked up the bank's empty bag, in exchange for a mere $200,000,000 of our money.

You can read about the bailout in this New York Times article, but the only important line in the article is this:

[T]he Fed will ultimately bear the risk of the loan.

Basically, it's another subprime loan. No income verification, no money down, flip this federal money into your own pockets, Wall Street! Whoo-woo.

What does this mean to the rest of us?

The United States has entered a recession that could be "substantially more severe" than recent ones, former National Bureau of Economic Research President Martin Feldstein said
Friday.

"The situation is very bad, the situation is getting worse, and the risks are that it could get very bad," Feldstein said in a speech at the Futures Industry Association meeting in Boca Raton, Florida.

NBER is a private sector group that is considered the arbiter of U.S. business cycles.

It's a lot like the Bush economy that Clinton inherited in 1992 -- except it's much, much worse.

Hold on to your hats, folks. We're in for a bumpy ride.

By the way, here's Obama's response to the flap over his pastor, once again distancing himself from the statements. He also went on Fox Noise to quell the cable furor. I don't think anyone will remember this if the stock market tanks and gas is $4 a gallon in November.

The Media Attack on Obama Begins

flickr: SI Neg. 2004-41682. Date: na....Printed ribbon bearing the United States flag and printed beneath it the phrase "OUR UNION /NOW AND FOREVER.".In 1860, Abraham Lincoln pulled ahead of William Seward and won the Republican nomination on the third ballot. The Republican platform opposed slavery in the territories but upheld the right of slavery in the South. It also opposed the Dredd-Scott decision. The Democrats nominated Stephen Douglas and the Southern-Democrats who called themselves National Democrats nominated John Breckinridge. In addition, John Bell was nominated by the Constitutional Union party. The Republicans were united behind Lincoln, while the opposition was divided by regions. Most of the campaign was implemented by regional party organizations. The candidates took a small active part. Stephen Douglas was the only candidate to campaign actively throughout the country...Credit: Joe Goulait (Smithsonian Institution)


I turn on MSNBC this morning and Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough, the whiteboy rightwing mob (with their empty enabler Mika Brzezinski bleating helplessly in the background, saying nothing, nodding), are shouting that Barack Obama must denounce the pastor of his church for saying that 9/11 was the fault of the victims.

Here's what Richard Wright, the pastor of Obama's church, said in his first sermon after 9/11:

WRIGHT: We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant. Because the stuff we have done overseas has now brought right back into our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost.

He's not blaming the victims. He's saying America's foreign policy created some of our problems. For Christ's sake, we FUNDED Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in the 1980s (slate: How Reagan turned Osama into a terrorist kingpin.)

In response, Matthews says, (paraphrasing) This is coming out now because the media is looking at Obama now because he's the frontrunner. Speaking truth to power, that's our job. I almost spit out my coffee. Chris Matthews, speaking truth to power? Please.

Chris Matthews is counting on you to forget that he gave George W. Bush a big wet kiss for seven years. But The Google is our friend, and we do not forget. We do not forget how Chris Matthews slobbered over George W. Bush after the whole "Mission Accomplished" speech in 2003. Here it is, Mr. "Truth to Power" Matthews, digging deeply into Karl Rove's photo op, courtesy of Media Matters:

On May 1, 2003, President Bush landed on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln aboard an S-3B Viking jet, emerged from the aircraft in full flight gear, and proceeded to "press[] flesh," as The Washington Post put it, as he shook hands and hugged crew members in front of the cameras. Later that day, Bush delivered a nationally televised speech from the deck of the Abraham Lincoln in which he declared that "[m]ajor combat operations in Iraq have ended," all the while standing under a banner reading: "Mission Accomplished." Despite lingering questions over the continued violence in Iraq, the failure to locate weapons of mass destruction, and the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein, as well as evidence that Bush may have shirked his responsibilities in the Texas Air National Guard (TANG) during the Vietnam War, the print and televised media fawned over Bush's "grand entrance" and the image of Bush as the "jet pilot" and the "Fighter Dog."

Chief among the cheerleaders was MSNBC's Chris Matthews. On the May 1, 2003, edition of Hardball, Matthews was joined in his effusive praise of Bush by right-wing pundit Ann Coulter and "Democrat" Pat Caddell. Former U.S. Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-CA) also appeared on the program.:

MATTHEWS: What's the importance of the president's amazing display of leadership tonight?

[...]

MATTHEWS: What do you make of the actual visual that people will see on TV and probably, as you know, as well as I, will remember a lot longer than words spoken tonight? And that's the president looking very much like a jet, you know, a high-flying jet star. A guy who is a jet pilot. Has been in the past when he was younger, obviously. What does that image mean to the American people, a guy who can actually get into a supersonic plane and actually fly in an unpressurized cabin like an actual jet pilot?

[...]

MATTHEWS: Do you think this role, and I want to talk politically [...], the president deserves everything he's doing tonight in terms of his leadership. He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics. Do you think he is defining the office of the presidency, at least for this time, as basically that of commander in chief? That [...] if you're going to run against him, you'd better be ready to take [that] away from him.

[...]

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you, Bob Dornan, you were a congressman all those years. Here's a president who's really nonverbal. He's like Eisenhower. He looks great in a military uniform. He looks great in that cowboy costume he wears when he goes West. I remember him standing at that fence with Colin Powell. Was [that] the best picture in the 2000 campaign?

[...]

MATTHEWS: Ann Coulter, you're the first to speak tonight on the buzz. The president's performance tonight, redolent of the best of Reagan -- what do you think?

COULTER: It's stunning. It's amazing. I think it's huge. I mean, he's landing on a boat at 150 miles per hour. It's tremendous. It's hard to imagine any Democrat being able to do that. And it doesn't matter if Democrats try to ridicule it. It's stunning, and it speaks for itself.

[Mr. Truth to Power lets Man Coulter's absurd statement go unchallenged.]

Oh, it gets better! Mika Brzezinski just asked Chris Matthews if this will help the Democrats implode in November. Chris Matthews tells her what an impressive candidate John McCain is and how well he will do in the Rust Belt states.

Will this all benefit McCain in the long run? she asks.

McCain's base will be working feverishly to get him elected in November.