Presidential debates on ABC right now-both parties

I could be wrong or it was editing, but I think we'll see Obama sitting in on one of those Wright invectives and smiling.  That's what caught my attention to this last night.  We'll see.

Beesie, are you kidding.  How could one dose off with all THAT yelling!  LOL

The problem with Wright is he's bringing politics to the pulpit.  To say that Hillary as never been called the "N" word is disgusting.  I find it extremely disgusting to be so divisive.  What's Wright's goal?  Does he not want African Americans to get along with whites? 

I agree that blacks were treated awfully.  And, probably it is still happening.  I cannot say I've seen it happen.  I don't work at the police station.  He accuses the government of giving blacks drugs and throwing them in jail.  I think he's a liar!  Sorry.

Let me tell you something.  My daughter just told me about her MIL's husband getting "stung."  He got a second job to help pay off credit card bills that his wife is mostly responsible for.  Well, this underage kid came in to the convenient store.  When  he asked the kid for his I.D. he was tired and not thinking.  And, he's not the smartest guy on the block and rarely works the register.  He sold the boy the cigarettes.  The cops got him.  This man has NEVER, EVER been in trouble.  It was purely a mistake, but a sting.  So, not only blacks are "stung."

I have also seen African Americans talk against this kind of rhetoric that Wright preaches.

Yep, no one is going to have their mind changed. 

Shirley 

Even a little child in Sunday school knows that one of the Ten Commandments is "thou shalt not use the Lord's name in vain". So how can a Christian "minister" use it over and over, and it is okay?

Obama is through. His true colors have finally been exposed.Praise the Lord! You cannot be affiliated with someone who screams "G--D--- America!" and expect people to vote for you.

I tried to tell everyone weeks ago, to check out this church, but people thought I was being ridiculous. I am glad to see that the main stream media is finally telling some of the stories that have been floating around Chicago for years.

Ok guys Susie thanks on the update on Oprah............I  think Obama has taken a misstep in saying in the 20 plus years he has been associated with the Rev Wright he has not heard him make these kind of diverse statements..........of course now Fox News will be pouring over the video tapes looking to see if they can see him in attendance in the congregation......since it seems that cnn and msnbc have somewhat tried to ignore this situation.............if there is no proof that he actually heard these statements this may just go away........if there is some proof he could very well be in trouble especially in PA..........we will just have to wait and see............but one thing is for sure that there is an extreme left wing of this country that hates America and of course we all are aware of the extreme right wing..................I think both extremes are dangerous..............of course the majority of Americans fall somewhere in the middle..........some of us to the right of the middle some of us to the left of the middle but we are mostly in the middle.............imo......Shokk

Senator Obama is running on uniting this country and on his judgment.  How can Senator Obama unite this country when he has been an active member for 20 years of a Church that is so divisive. He said he will bring together white and black and brown people yet he CHOOSES to be a member of a separatist Black church.  Why didn't he choose a church with a congregation that represents all of us?   You can tell Michelle Obama has been listening to Reverand Wright's speeches from her statement that this is the first time in her adult life she has been proud of her country.  I do not find this good judgment at all and I have serious concerns about this man leading this country.  As for McCain accepting endorsements from some evangelical ministers, McCain has made it very clear over the years that he finds the religous conservative right to be divisive which is why they did not want him as a nominee.  Plus he has not attended any of their churches and probably doesn't even know them.  Obama has a close relationship with Reverand Wright. 

Amy, if you want to remain blind, so be it.  If one is ignorant enough to believe that Obama never sat in the pulpit and heard this type of hate speech then I can sell you.....

Say what you want about Falwell.  No he wasn't perfect.  But, Amy, he LOVED this country.  And the way you believe is fine.  But his beliefs were different.  He was kind man. And whether or not you heard about his apologies, it is true.  And, I realize most people if not all will not like Jerry Falwell.  God rest his soul.

When I heard Obama last night saying he did not hear this from the pulpit, well does that mean it heard it elsewhere?  And ignored it?

First he said he heard it one time...then he said one or two times.

I don't believe many people are going to believe he NEVER heard these messages over the 20 years he was a member.

Amy, if this man were up there yelling about homosexuals being an abomination, would you support Obama?  He is preaching hate and lies toward America.  Accusing us for inventing HIV to poison people of color is absurd.  Yes, the Tuskegee study happened.  I think it was horrible when I heard about it.  And no I don't believe we are "feeding" dope to the black community so we can put them in jail.

I'm sick of appalled that ANYONE would stand on the pulpit and lie and I see all his congregation dancing around, jumping, because they believe him and he is devisive.

I feel sorry for you.  You sound like a very bitter person.

Here, Amy, read this.  I heard about this on Fox News (faux, according to you) on the O'Reilly show.  I believe I have the email addy that his guest gave.  I'm not sure what she wants us to do with it.  I don't have it with me.  It's downstairs.

Gay teen facing gallows in Iran after asylum bids in Britain and Holland fail   http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=531729&in_page_id=1770&ito=1490   Last updated at 09:24am on 12th March 2008   A gay Iranian teen could be facing the gallows in Iran after his attempts to seek asylum in Britain and Holland failed.

Yesterday the Netherlands' highest court rejected Mehdi Kazemi's last-ditch bid to avoid deportation to Britain, where he fears authorities will send him back to Tehran and possible execution.

The teenager came to London to study English in 2005 but later discovered that his boyfriend had been arrested by the Iranian police, charged with sodomy and hanged.

Mr Kazemi applied for asylum in the UK, saying he feared for his life if he returned to Iran.

He fled to the Netherlands after the British authorities rejected his case late last year.

However in a ruling published on its Web site, the Council of State said Britain is responsible for Mehdi Kazemi's case, because it was there that the 19-year-old first applied for asylum.

Liberal Democrat MP for Southwark and Bermondsey Simon Hughes said he would support Mr Kazemi if he is returned to the UK.

Mr Hughes said the Home Office had assured him that the case would be reconsidered.

Gay rights campaigner Rene van Soeren said Kazemi's Dutch lawyer was considering an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. The lawyer, Borg Palm, did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

Boris van der Ham, a lawmaker who has taken up Kazemi's cause, has tabled questions in Parliament asking the junior minister for immigration, Nebahat Albayrak, to lobby British authorities on Kazemi's behalf.

Albayrak should either urge Britain not to send Kazemi back to Iran or offer him asylum in the Netherlands, Van der Ham said in a telephone interview.

"There should be some political leadership," he said. "I hope in Britain they will do it and otherwise we should take the boy."

Kazemi is not expected to be deported before Albayrak has answered Van der Ham's questions.

Justice Ministry spokeswoman Karen Temmink said Albayrak is studying the court ruling and drawing up answers to Van der Ham's questions.

Kazemi's case highlights not only the plight of homosexuals in Iran, but also differences in the way European Union allies deal with asylum seekers.

The Netherlands relaxes its tough asylum laws for Iranian gays - virtually guaranteeing asylum to any who apply here - because of persecution they face at home. Britain, on the other hand, rejected Kazemi's original asylum request.

Kazemi, 19, says he traveled to London to study English in 2005 and applied for asylum in Britain after learning that his lover in Iran had been executed for sodomy.

After British authorities rejected Kazemi's application, he fled to mainland Europe and applied for asylum in the Netherlands.

However, because Kazemi had already applied for asylum and been rejected in Britain, the Dutch government is refusing to consider his case and insists he must be sent back to Britain. It cites the European Union's 2003 Dublin Regulation, which declares that the member state where an asylum seeker first enters the EU is responsible for processing that person's claim.

Yesterday's court ruling upheld the Dutch position.

Palm said last week that Kazemi was in such despair he was on suicide watch in a center for rejected asylum seekers in the port city of Rotterdam.

Britain's Home Office has declined comment, saying it does not discuss individual asylum applications, but it is unlikely authorities would reverse their earlier rejection.

However, Britain's Border and Immigration Agency has issued a statement that could give Kazemi hope.

"We examine with great care each individual case before removal and we will not remove anyone who we believe is at risk on their return," the agency said.

Mr Kazemi was told by his father in the Iranian capital Tehran that his boyfriend was questioned about his sexual relationships before his execution in April 2006 and named him under interrogation.

According to Iranian human rights campaigners, more than 4,000 gay men and lesbians have been executed since the Ayatollahs seized power in 1979.

British gay rights groups condemned UK immigration officials' handling of Mr Kazemi's application for asylum.

Ben Summerskill, chief executive of Stonewall, said: "We remain deeply disturbed about this case.

"There is incontrovertible evidence that lesbian and gay people face danger in Iran and we will be raising this once again with the Home Secretary."

Peter Tatchell, of campaign group OutRage!, said: "Any attempt by Britain to return Mehdi to Iran will put him at risk of arrest, imprisonment, torture and possible execution."

A Border and Immigration Agency spokeswoman said: "The UK Government is committed to providing protection for those individuals found to be genuinely in need, in accordance with our commitments under international law.

"If an application is refused, there is a right of appeal to an independent judge, and we only return those who have been found by the asylum decision-making process and the independent courts not to need international protection."

If anything, this shows Obama's inexperience with politics.  You don't buy land from, or associate with people who are under indictment.  You don't attend churches with pastors who espouse hate messages, and I don't know what else might be lurking out there, but Obama, you don't say you never knew what was going on in your church when the pastor was so inflammatory.  That dog don't hunt.  He should have gotten better advice, but again, his advisors might be just as inexperienced as he is.

Liz, you said it perfectly.  And succinctly too.  I need to learn how to do succinct!

Amy, I'm not splitting hairs. Obama was emphatic in saying that he was unaware of these statements by Rev. Wright.  Yes, he did say that he knew that the Rev. was controversial, but that was with regard to "speaking out on social issues".  Obama has been very clear that he was unaware of any of these hateful statements towards the U.S., towards whites.....   And that simply can't be true.  Obama may not have heard the words while in church, but surely he hasn't had his head in the sand for the past year as this has been reported on.

You may not see this as an issue for Obama, but lots of people do.  Take a look at this video from MSNBC:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/23638104#23638059

And yes, I'm pro-Clinton, I certainly have never hidden that.  But I also see many positive qualities in Obama and I've commented on that in my posts too. However what's concerned me all along is that Obama wasn't being scrutinized as much as a presidential candidate needs to be.  His positions were inconsistent and his background was fuzzy.  Now that he is being scrutinized, all h*** is breaking loose and his "new politics" facade is cracking.  Honestly, since he is likely to be the nominee, I really had hoped that I would come to like him and trust him, but I just can't see that happening now.  Too many lies.  Too many questionable relationships.  Too many changes in his positions (which are well documented but which he won't admit to). 

Grace, before I can finish reading your post I have seen other African American men who said their church does not preach this stuff.  Understand?  He's a racist!  He's a divider!  He's anti-American! 

He should go and live in the filth in Africa.  My daughter and her dh are traveling there and have been for over two years.  No, they're not missionaries.  They're doing this on their own.  The women are treated like crap in these little villages.  The little children take care of their little siblings.  The men drink while the woman carries heaving loads.  Wright should go and travel throughout Africa and teach these men how to treat their families instead of getting drunk and doing nothing.

I say kuddos to Oprah for starting a girl's school over there.  Some people wonders why not here.  I say it's her money and these girls WANT an education. 

How in the heck did I get off topic.   

BTW, remember who sold the slaves?  How about the farms that have gone to hell because the whites were forced to move? 

Read this.  This is old news.  But now look what's happened.  My friend works for someone for S. Africa who had to move because of safety issues.

http://www.zimbabwesituation.com/farm_inv.html   From the Sunday Telegraph 5th March 2000

Invasions put farmers on the frontline
            By Inigo Gilmore in Norton, Zimbabwe
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe's refusal to stop the invasion of farms owned by             whites in Zimbabwe has led to tense standoffs  between families trying to                   protect their livelihoods and mobs of angry  squatters.

 John Wilde, a British farmer who moved to Zimbabwe 17 years ago, was
patrolling his farmland when he received an urgent call alerting him that Maria
van Staden and her three young children had been besieged at their home by
a mob of angry squatters.

Racing along a dirt track as he turned into the drive leading to the van
Stadens' house he was confronted by 30 men wielding wooden clubs, pick
axes and machetes. He said: "It was very tense and nervy, especially as there
were two of us surrounded by 30 of them. They were either high or half drunk
so we did not know which way it was going to turn. They were shouting that
we should get off the land, saying that as whites we had no right to be here."

After several hours of negotiations that ran late into the night, Mr Wilde
persuaded most of the mob to move on and the family were told to lock
themselves indoors for their own safety. The 39-year-old British farmer is
certain the protesters singled out the home on his estate as a primary target
knowing that Mrs van Staden's husband, who runs a shop on the estate, was
away. It was part of their determination to intimidate the white farming
community.
Mr Wilde said that his district has previously been touched by land disputes and that the invasion of more 70 white farms last week has plunged the country into a new crisis. The
farmers around Norton, 20 south of the capital Harare, believe the  government is pulling all the strings in the crisis.
President Mugabe's comments yesterday that would do nothing to stop the
civil war veterans pursuing land appeared to be confirmation. The land
invasions follow Mr Mugabe's defeat in February's constitutional referendum,
which would have given him sweeping powers  seize white-owned land for
redistribution to blacks. The result has his Zanu party in a state of panic  ahead of parliamentary elections due month.

Mr Wilde and his wife Vicky, who  seven-year-old twin daughters,
Stephie and Lylie, have had to grapple  disruptions to their farm
operations and fear for their own safety.
Trouble erupted early last week when more than 200 protesters, led by a small
group of civil war veterans, marched onto Saffron Walden farm a few miles
up the road and hammered stakes into the ground to mark out the land
they were claiming.

Within hours Mr Wilde, the general manager of the 5,000-acre Parklands
estate, was aware that a breakaway group of 60 had moved across to his
land. He observed a group of veterans mobile telephones, who arrived earlier in government vehicles, directing a rowdy crowd of from a nearby informal settlement. Later, some young men broke into the his assistant's cottage nearby and held him
hostage overnight before releasing him the following morning after roughing him up.

When the local police refused to intervene the protesters, some armed with
automatic weapons and handguns, threatened Parklands's 500 workers, who
then downed tools. For much of last week Mr Wilde and his wife struggled to
keep the farm running without the bulk of their workforce.
At their hillside stone farmhouse uniformed guards are on alert. Although Mr
Wilde keeps a shotgun at home he was reluctant to carry it with him last week
as this might have proved provocative. The Commercial Farmers Union has
urged farmers to show maximum restraint in the volatile climate as it fears a
single act of retaliation could unleash mayhem.

On Friday Mr Wilde awoke to discover another crowd of squatters singing
freedom songs outside the main gate of his farm. They flocked onto his fields
and hammered wooden pegs into the ground. He said: "If these disruptions
continue during what is a critical time in the tobacco and arable season it
could make quite a few farmers destitute or at least put them out of business.
Those who survive will be lucky. And for the economy generally it could be
disastrous. He added: "We feel very uncertain about our future. We've got a young family
and if it does turn out to be safer to go away we may have to start looking
seriously at that. It really depends on what the government intends doing
now."

Why doesn't Wright help out these people instead of spewing hate to our African American community here.  Sad, isn't it?

You say that black churches do this?  I'm sorry.  I haven't finished reading your post.  But, do all black churches accuse the government of creating HIV to kill of black folks?  And do they preach that our government gives drugs to blacks so they can be put in jail?

I rarely detest anyone.  But I do detest the teaching of this man.  I feel sorry for black folks if they hear this in their churches.  There's enough division amongst us.  We don't need more and we don't need the likes of Wright who is now on a sabatical! 

I am angry!  Now, I'll finish your post.

God Bless America!

Shirley

My daughter and schools...We sent her to private schools, she attended Wake Forest University THEN eight years later she attended a predominately black universtity because it was cheaper.  She asked me what she should do.  I encouraged her to attend North Carolina Central University .  I told her she would make her own reputation.  That she didn't need to take out a huge loan.  She went to NCCU and she graduated suma cum laude and gave a great speech.  In high school she graduated salutatorian.  After working in a large law firm for three or four years she and another lawyer in the same firm have opened their own office.

Why am I even posting this.  It's because my daughter in her 17 years of education (before law school) had no interaction with African Americans.  When she graduated from WFU she was, for eight years, the court advocate for the local domestic shelter.  She then worked with and for women of color and also women who were underprivileged, plus women who were privileged. Domestic violence occurs in all age groups, races, and economic levels of society.

I believe she could work with all people because we taught her to be respectful.  You cannot stand up and preach venom, even if not often, and expect the audience not to "soak" it in. 

Jeremiah Wright is just Wrong!

God Bless America!

Shirley

Well, maybe this isn't a big deal where I thought it would be in the mid section of the country.  Iowa just voted half of Edwards delegates to Obama.  Either they think this is no biggie, or they still feel Obama can shake it off come election time.