With preachers falling by the wayside, John Fund reports,
rumors are swirling on the campaign trail that a new video will soon surface featuring Mrs. Obama appearing on a panel with radical speakers during which she makes more controversial statements.
Please God, don’t let him disown her. For the kids’ sake if nothing else.
Steve Rhodes in the matter of chickens coming home to roost in Big O’s back yard:
Barack Obama officially disowned Trinity Church on Saturday but remains associated with a far more sinister organization with a long record of divisive misdeeds and criminal behavior that is likely to become an issue in the general election: The Cook County Democratic Party.
Among other things, it’s the party of winning one for the Kennedy fellow in 1960.
Father Pfleger couldn’t give it up, apparently, mocking the Clintons (and McCain) again last Sunday from his own pulpit at St. Sabina’s:
“Hillary and McCain would wish they had a preacher with the integrity of Jeremiah Wright. … They got some old weak preacher…some old Joel Osteen cotton candy preacher.”
The reference is to the preacher the Clintons heard on March 2 in Houston at Rev. Osteen’s Lakewood Church.
Now: Did he assure Cardinal George about no more political talk before or after last Sunday? Or is he merely comparing preachers?
If you want the goods on Father Pfleger, look here, at Discover the Networks, where among other things you will find this near-endorsement of Jihadism which might come as news to many readers:
On another occasion, Pfleger invited Kareem Irfan, former Chairman of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago, to speak at Saint Sabina on the fourth anniversary of 9/11. A member of the Islamic Society of North America, Irfan has characterized Islamic beheadings of non-Muslims not as acts of evil, but rather as manifestations of “a primordial sense of retaliation and revenge.”
Endorsement is not too strong a word. Pfleger’s guests are not people with whom he disagrees.
Unless you think he sharply distinguishes between this, that, and the other:
Rev. Michael Pfleger invited Kareem Irfan, former chairman of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago, to speak to his congregation about prejudice against Muslims and Arabs in the wake of Sept. 11.
“In the name of patriotism and the Patriot Act, there was a great rising of prejudice and bigotry against Muslims and Arabs,” Pfleger said. “We cannot allow that under the guise of patriotism.”
Irfan spoke about the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the denial of legal representation for those being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
“We’ve seen a shameful erosion of civil rights and liberties,” he said, referring to the Patriot Act’s power to allow law enforcement to use such measures as secret arrests and unrestricted wiretaps to investigate people since Sept. 11. “There’s been a distressing violation of the privacy of organizations and individuals.”
This is how it’s done, of course. You make all-purpose bigotry the theme of your 9/11 observance.
A Long Island monsignor offers himself as Big O.’s pastor, to replace those being thrown under the bus:
Monsignor Jim Lisante of Rockville Centre, LI, praised GOP nominee Sen. John McCain and said, “A lot more of us would be comfortable with [Obama’s] judgment skills if he hadn’t sat for 20 years through the words offered by his preacher of division, bigotry . . . without a word of rejection from Sen. Obama – that is, until the media brought it up. And now he doesn’t want any part of the guy. I’m willing to be his pastor.”
A generous offer, I’d say.
Hillary looked like a sure thing for president, but
“. . . then out of nowhere came, hey, I’m Barack Obama. And she said, ‘Oh damn, where did you come from? I’m white. I’m entitled. There’s a black man stealing my show.’”
That’s Chicago’s own Father Pfleger Sunday in O’s Trinity Church on 95th Street, citing Hillary Clinton as a case of “white entitlement and supremacy” which he felt bound to “expose.”
Addressing Rev. Otis Moss, the Trinity pastor and successor to Rev. Jeremiah Wright, he said from the pulpit:
“Reverend Moss, when Hillary was crying, and people said that was put on, I really don’t believe it was put on. I really believe that she just always thought, ‘This is mine. I’m Bill’s wife. I’m white. And this is mine. I just got to get up and step into the plate.’
He
then mimicked Clinton crying as the audience erupted into applause and gave [him] a standing ovation. . . . . “She wasn’t the only one crying [he added]. There was a whole lot of white people cryin’.” . . . . Apparently realizing his remarks might attract media attention, Pfleger stated, “I’m sorry. I don’t want to get you into any more trouble.”
Moss thanked God for Pfleger’s comments.
Pfleger also pitched for reparations, demanding that whites give up their money to make up for slavery:
“Honestly now, to address the one who says, ‘Don’t hold me responsible for what my ancestors did.’ But you have enjoyed the benefits of what your ancestors did … and unless you are ready to give up the benefits, throw away your 401 fund, throw away your trust fund, throw away all the monies you put away into the company you walked into because your daddy and grand daddy. …”
Shouting, Pfleger continued, “Unless you are willing to give up the benefits then you must be responsible for what was done in your generation, because you are the beneficiaries of this insurance policy.”
The Big O. on his grandfather in Dreams of My Father:
“Gramps returned from the war never having seen real combat, and the family moved to California, where he enrolled at Berkeley under the GI bill,” he writes. “But the classroom couldn’t contain his ambitions, his restlessness, and so the family moved again.”
The Big O. in New Mexico on Memorial Day:
“My grandfather marched in Patton’s Army, but I cannot know what it is to walk into battle like so many of you.”
The Big O. in a 2002 antiwar speech:
“My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton’s army. He saw the dead and dying across the fields of Europe; he heard the stories of fellow troops who first entered Auschwitz and Treblinka. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil, and he did not fight in vain.”
He thinks he’s conning people in a South Side church basement.
The Big O. on his grandfather in Dreams of My Father:
“Gramps returned from the war never having seen real combat, and the family moved to California, where he enrolled at Berkeley under the GI bill,” he writes. “But the classroom couldn’t contain his ambitions, his restlessness, and so the family moved again.”
The Big O. in New Mexico on Memorial Day:
“My grandfather marched in Patton’s Army, but I cannot know what it is to walk into battle like so many of you.”
The Big O. in a 2002 antiwar speech:
“My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton’s army. He saw the dead and dying across the fields of Europe; he heard the stories of fellow troops who first entered Auschwitz and Treblinka. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil, and he did not fight in vain.”
He thinks he’s conning people in a South Side church basement.
“Even old-time Clintonites were appalled” at Hillary’s claim that RFK’s assassination in 1968 justifies her staying in the race, says Robert Novak.
The most important political impact of Clinton’s conduct is to make Sen. Barack Obama’s task as nominee more difficult. For the first time, we hear serious talk among Democrats that the party may not be fully able to join ranks at the convention in Denver in late August.
“The hostility on both sides is intense,” he says, with O. boo’d by pro-Hillary unionists in Puerto Rico and Obama-ites crying “feminists” as their enemy. “The longer this continues, the more difficult will be reconciliation.”
This doesn’t mean McCain’s ready to capitalize on Dem disunion.
His biggest problem may be failure to realize that the Republican coalition is not fully united behind him. The most recent defectors are lobbyists expelled from his campaign who are not happy about their treatment. We continue to hear complaints from evangelicals, economic conservatives, and other critics of McCain. The refrain continues from conservatives that maybe the country and the GOP need four years of Obama.
Great.
Vaclav Klaus, the Czech Republic’s gift to common sense and overall smarts, would like to debate Al (there’s-money-in-global-warming) Gore, but G. is not interested. It would only elevate the skeptics, he says, as John Fund reports in Wall Street Journal’s Political Diary.
But he may have another motivation for avoiding Mr. Klaus [writes Fund]. As the late William F. Buckley once put it, “Why does bologna reject the grinder?”
Klaus yesterday likened cap-and-traders (limiters by fiat of carbon emissions) to promoting a program such as Soviets imposed on his country.
Yes. Central planners are all alike — like smokers at their pettin’ parties and poker games. They just gotta have another way to run things.
Later: Here’s another approach:
Conservative grassroots group Grassfire.org wants people to waste as much energy as possible on June 12 by “hosting a barbecue, going for a drive, watching television, leaving a few lights on, or even smoking a few cigars.”
The point: the group wants to “help Americans break free from the ‘carbon footprint guilt’ being imposed by Climate Alarmists.”
Yes, a sort of kill-the-guilt program.
Blithe Spirit 