March 17, 2008

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, one thing -- I want to just get rid of this.  I don't care whether Obama was ever in a pew when Reverend Wright said what he said. I don't care whether Obama never heard it. Because I don't believe it.  He didn't have to be there to know what this guy was talking about. He knew him for 20 years, and we're falling for a smokescreen here. If you get sucked into this notion that, "Well, Obama was never in church. He might never heard it," you're being led down the path.  The thing is, the New York Times has reported that the Obama campaign "disinvited Reverend J. Wright from delivering the public invocation at Obama's candidacy announcement."  Now, we all know that Reverend J. Wright was publicly disinvited.  But Wright, Reverend J. Wright talking to the New York Times, said, "Fifteen minutes before it I got a call from Barack. One of his members had talked him into uninviting me."  In a phone call with Reverend Wright, Obama "cited a Rolling Stone story that was titled, 'The Radical Roots of Barack Obama,' and according to Reverend Wright, Obama said to him, 'Look, you can get kind of rough in the sermons, so we've decided that it's best for you not to be out there in public.'"

So he knew!  It's in the New York Times.  Reverend Wright, in essence, confirms what Obama is trying to deny.  He did it inadvertently. He's not angry at trying to sabotage Barack, but he clearly has undermined Barack's whole premise that he never heard it because he quotes Obama as telling him, "Look, you're kind of out there. You're getting kind of rough in the sermons." So, anyway, it's a smokescreen, and we ought not fall for it.  Also, David Axelrod, who is running Obama's campaign -- this is from Byron York at The Corner at National Review -- says that "A 'Major' Reason Wright Didn't Speak at Obama's Announcement Was...It Was Too Cold" out there. Axelrod told reporters that the weather was one of the reasons Rev. Jeremiah Wright did not speak at Obama's presidential candidacy announcement last year in Springfield, Illinois. When asked on a conference call why Wright did not speak, as had been planned, Axelrod said, 'Part of what happened was that it was seven degrees in Springfield that day, and we truncated the program, and that was certainly a major part of the motivation there.' When a reporter followed up, asking, 'So you're saying that Rev. Wright did not speak because it was too cold?' Axelrod broadened his answer. 'That was part of the decision,' he said. 'There was no doubt that there was controversy surrounding him, and we didn't want to make him a target and a distraction on a day when Sen. Obama was going to announce his candidacy.'" Why not?  I know Obama's "denounced," but that may not enough here.  He is losing support now among white male voters.  That's the latest polling data.  He's losing support among white male voters, and whoever wants to win the presidency has got to win a majority of white male voters.  Obama was in the recording studio over the weekend.  

(playing of Jeremiah Was My Pastor)

RUSH: Barack Obama, portrayed vocally by "white comedian" Paul Shanklin. There is more footage here of Reverend J. Wright.  This is a montage here of sermons between 2001 and 2007 at the Trinity United Church of Christ.

WRIGHT:  The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color.  The government lied! The government lied about Pearl Harbor. (cheering) They knew the Japanese were going to attack.  Government's lied.  We've got a paranoid group of patriots in power that now, in the interests of homeland stupidity (cheers) -- I mean homeland security. The government lied about the Tuskegee experiment. They purposely infected African-American men with syphilis! [snip]  "Fighting for peace," is like raping for virginity. [snip]  What's going on in white America, US of KKKA, black men turning on black men.  That is fighting the wrong enemy.  You both are the primary targets in an oppressive society, that sees both of you as a dangerous threat. [snip]  We cannot see how what we are doing is the same thing Al-Qaeda is doing under a different color flag (cheers and applause), and guess what else?  If they don't find them some weapons of mass destruction, they gonna do that like the LAPD and plant some weapons of mass destruction. (wild cheering)

RUSH:  Now, that congregation is going nuts during all this, folks. It is just pure hate-liberalism.  You can call it racism.  It's got all of the components of liberalism.  In fact, Bill Sammon in his book Meet the Next President, divulges one of the philosophies of the Trinity United Church of Christ.  Reverend J. Wright "advocated a redistribution of wealth that went beyond socialism.  The congregation was required to embrace 'economic parity' and disavow the pursuit of 'middleclassness.'" This, folks, is the church that was instrumental in bringing Barack Obama to Christ.  This was the church advocating radical wealth redistribution, "economic parity." Everybody has an equal amount of stuff regardless who earns it.  All of this rage and anger... Actually, it's not that foreign. You can find this kind of rage and anger for the last four years on many Democrat blogs, liberal blogs.  There is this rage out there, and this congregation was eating this stuff up.  I just refuse to believe... You know, Obama can denounce it all he wants. He went on this Friday night damage control tour on TV. He went on all the networks. In fact, let's listen to a couple of these.  CNN's Anderson Cooper 180. Cooper says, "I want to ask you why you've been listening to this pastor and been close to him for nearly 20 years."

OBAMA:  I have to confess that those are not statements that I ever heard when I was sitting in (pause) the pews, uh, at this church.

RUSH:  Who cares?

OBAMA:  Uh, th--this is a church that I have been a member of for 20 years.  Uh, this is a well-established, typical historically African-American church on the south side of Chicago with a wonderful set of ministries -- and what I have been hearing and had been hearing in church was talk about Jesus, and talk about faith and values.  Uh, had I heard those in the church, I would have told Reverend Wright that, uh, you know, that I profoundly disagreed with him, they didn't reflect my values, and they didn't reflect my ideals.

RUSH:  He's trying to get away with saying he never heard it and so it wasn't said.  Well, when he calls to tell J. Wright he's not speaking at his presidential announcement -- he says, "Look, your sermons are kind of rough. You're getting rough in your sermons" -- he knew exactly what this guy was. Look, Oprah Winfrey used to be a member of this church, and Oprah Winfrey bagged this church back in the late nineties, because she didn't like what she was hearing from the Reverend J. Wright.  This guy knew (and knows to this day, Obama does) exactly what Wright's all about. He's his mentor.  He's going to have to treat this in a smarter and more face-straight-up manner here if he's going to get past this, folks.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We are here at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, reviewing the Barack Obama Friday night damage control tour.  Here's another question and answer with Anderson Cooper 180 on CNN.  Cooper said, "Senator Obama, did you not know -- I mean, a couple days after 9/11 your preacher said, 'This was America's chickens coming home to roost,' the result of what he called American terrorism around the world.  I mean, you may not have been there, but you must have heard that he had said these things?"

OBAMA:  You know, I confess that I did not hear about this until I started running for president, and then there was a story that was issued in which I strongly objected to these statements and condemned them, and so my belief was that this was something out of the ordinary.  Obviously some of these statements indicate that this was happening more frequently, and so I have to strongly condemn the statements that were made.  They do not reflect my views or Michelle's views or probably the views of many people in the church.

RUSH:  Ohhh.

OBAMA:  On the other hand, Reverend Wright is somebody who is like an uncle or a family member who you may strongly object to what they have to say, but, as he's about to retire, you know, I have no intention of leaving the church itself.

RUSH:  First thing I notice, other than I just don't believe this, but other than that, the first thing I noticed is that without a TelePromTer this guy does not have the flowing, charismatic cadence of his speeches, where he's talking about hope and the future and change and so forth.  He's back now to calling the guy crazy uncle.  Somebody out there call the Obama camp.  I want to solve this, and here's what you ought to say, Obama.  Call David Axelrod, somebody out there I know in the Obama campaign's gotta be monitoring this show.  Here's how you handle this.  You focus on the minister's hate, because it's obvious in every sound bite, every bit of footage, this guy hates.  He is angry; he is filled with rage; he is anti-America.  He hates.  And you, Obama, are a uniter, although there's no evidence of this.  Everybody in Obama's inner circle is mad at everything.  His wife's fit to be tied all the time.  This clown, J. Wright, never has what seems to be a reflective sober moment.  He just seems to be always just out on the edge about to lose it.  And yet we're told this Obama guy can unite us all and make us forget our horrible past.  How in the world can we forget our horrible past when his mentor is living 50 years ago and preaching to his congregation as though this were 50 years ago, and Obama chose this?  

You know, you don't choose your uncle.  You don't choose your parents.  You choose your preacher.  You choose your church.  So somebody, Obama, Axelrod, somebody out there, you gotta say, "Yes, Reverend J. Wright, my uncle, my mentor, whatever, yes, he's filled with hate, and there's too much of this in this country, and this is why I want to be president, because I want to get rid of and change the things that lead to this kind of discord in this country.  I think it's horrible that so many Americans in my party feel this way.  I think it's dangerous that so many Americans actually blame their country for these things, and I, as your president, want to change this."  There's an easy way of dealing with this, but he's not doing that.  When he's off the script and doesn't even have a script, he's on defense here, and he's saying things that are going to come back to haunt him later on in the general campaign if he succeeds in getting the nomination.  

But there's a larger question here.  Whether he was in the audience, whether he was sitting in the pew, I can't believe it took a year for him to find out that his mentor blamed America for 9/11, chickens coming home to roost.  I can't believe it took him a year to learn that the reverend was out there blaming America for creating the HIV virus to get rid of black people.  I think I first heard that on Nightline back when Ted Koppel still ran that show, might have been Mr. Ice T.  That was funny to watch, Koppel said, "Mr. T."  This is just a mess that he's making.  Reverend J. Wright, my friends, was Obama's mentor for 20 years.  No presidential candidate can belong to a church with a leadership and membership that adheres to such hate, to such an idea that we deserve 9/11, that we invented the AIDS crisis, or HIV virus, or the government did.  Let me do a Geraldine Ferraro.  Let's change the race here.  Let's say he's a white guy and he's going to a church, white church where the minister says this kind of stuff.  He's out of the campaign.  He is gone.  He is fini.  No country wants a president who's a member of a church with this kind of radicalism as its mainstream.  

Now, this Reverend J. Wright was Obama's mentor for 20 years.  Are we supposed to believe, are we supposed to assume that Obama was simply immune to the race baiting of Reverend Wright?  That's asking me too much.  You hang around somebody 20 years as a mentor, you choose them because something about them resonates with you and you like them, but all of a sudden you can have boundaries and all this hate and racism simply bounces off of you?  Why the hell stick with the church, then, if you're going to ignore all that, if that didn't matter?  Obama, by the way, is purposely campaigning on character, his character.  He is a uniter, we need to get past the old visions, politics of the past, blah, blah, blah, blah, without ever providing evidence of that character.  We haven't seen any evidence of the character.  We've heard flowery speeches of nothing, delivered greatly.  We don't see any evidence of the character.  What we see is that this guy is surrounded by people who are constantly enraged, ticked off about everything, mostly their country.  Now we see evidence of his character as exemplified by his choice of church, by his choice of reverend, and we're supposed to await proof of him being in the pews, when the worst of these things were spewed to the pews?  

The double standard here is Mitt Romney.  Here's a guy whose religion was trashed as a cult.  The Drive-By Media did everything they could, there were some on the Republican side -- ahem -- no need to mention names now because they're no longer in the race, but they were out there trying to undermine Romney on the base of religion.  Romney went out and gave a great speech in Texas about it.  We're supposed to just look past this because Obama wasn't in the pews when the Reverend J. Wright was spewing this stuff to the people in the pews.  Doesn't matter.  This is evidence of his character because he chose this church, he chose this guy to lead him.  What do you think a mentor is?  Most importantly, and I know I've said this a lot of other ways, but I'm going to say it again and use different terms.  Church membership is church "member"-ship.  It's a community of like-minded believers.  You go to a church, it's not just you and your reverend.  You have a like-minded relationship with all the members that you worship with in that church.  If some of those members of that church go wacky on you, you want them expelled, or you'll change churches.  If something happens in that church that you don't agree with, you'll get out of there.  If the rev starts going nuts on you, if the rev starts getting radical, you will leave the church.  Obama didn't leave the church.  The rev has always been radical.  

Obama belongs and chose to belong to a community that believes all of this tripe that the Reverend J. Wright spews.  He tithed his money in support of this church and its mission.  How else, and what else, are we to judge when trying to define Obama's character?  This is stuff of substance far more than these flowery TelePromTered speeches that he gives on hope and the future and change.  George W. Bush's faith, look at him.  It puts him in conflict with the unbelievers in our country.  In fact, that was the tack back when Romney gave his speech, the Drive-Bys, "Well, what about the atheists?  He just said he wasn't going to represent the atheists."  He was giving a speech about his religion, what is he supposed to do, sit up there and say, "You atheists, screw you."  No, the religion that teaches "screw you" is Obama's church.  Actually, it's "screw us" 'cause they're screwing us.  Or screw them because they're screwing us.  But there's a desire by the Drive-Bys to mitigate this, minimalize this so that it doesn't have the impact precisely because it does reflect on the character of Barack Obama.  

Bush, as I was saying, his faith puts him in conflict with unbelievers, but not over issues of faith, but rather in its role in public life.  I'm firmly convinced one of the reasons there's such abject hatred for Bush is because he is very open about his faith, he's very open that it informs him and guides him, and people hate that.  The left hates it.  Separation of church and state!  Where are those arguments now with the Reverend J. Wright?  Obama's denounced it, of course, but Reverend J. Wright's faith puts him in conflict with believers, but not over issues of faith, but rather issues of race.  This church is separatist and divisive, and it is the church of the man who claims best qualified to unite us?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  Folks, who knows what the future is going to bring? Nobody has the slightest idea.  We might all be disappointed as hell one morning in November, but I'll tell you: right now, these past few weeks, more fun than I've had in a long time, and the next couple-three weeks, all the way up to the... Well, I mean the next two or three months are going to be a gas, too.  This is just exciting.  Here's more Barack Obama on Anderson Cooper.  Cooper finally says, "But, I mean, uncles are blood relatives you're kind of stuck with at family gatherings, even when they say outrageous things.  You can't get rid of them.  You can walk out of a church.  You can walk up, go to a pastor and say, 'This is wrong.'"

OBAMA:  And as I said, Anderson, if I had heard any of these statements, I probably would have walked out, and I probably would have told Reverend Wright that they were wrong.  Uh, but they were not statements that I heard when I was in church.

COOPER:  So no one in the church ever said to you, "Man, last week you missed this sermon. Reverend Wright said this," or --

OBAMA:  No.

COOPER:  I mean, I think I read in your book that you used to listen to tapes of Reverend Wright when you were in Harvard Law School.

OBAMA:  I did. I understand.

COOPER:  So you had no idea?  

OBAMA:  I did not.

RUSH:  (sigh) Well, you know, this is just tough to believe.  He admits listening to tapes of Reverend Wright, but he didn't know this stuff is going on -- and nobody can prove that he knew it because nobody can prove he was there.  I hope the Clintons have videotape of Barack in the church, because there's a controversy. Apparently, there's a NewsMax story from a year ago that says he was in church on July 22nd of last year, but Obama's been able to refute that by saying he was at a National Council of La Raza speech at 1:30 in the afternoon in Miami.  It's possible he could have gone to the seven a.m. service I suppose, and gotten down there in a private plane, but seems like he's got an alibi on that.

March 17, 2008

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Juan Williams weighed in on the Obama saga.  This was Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace during the panel discussion.  Wallace said, "Hey, does it say anything about him that he's a member of this church and he's a member of Reverend Wright's flock?"

WILLIAMS:  Of course, it says something about him.  He joined this church, really, to solidify his credentials as authentically black and authentically a part of that South Side Chicago community, because it's the largest church there and Reverend Wright is well known not only in Chicago, but nationally, and he's known for making these outlandish comments.  It's very key here that, unlike the notion that Barack Obama wants to advance that he didn't -- or wasn't aware of it, I find that unbelievable, or that this is a crazy uncle speaking out, he -- he -- this is a man who he chose to be associated with.  It's not a family member.  He chose to be associated with Reverend Wright and saw advantage in it.  It speaks to his character and it speaks to the judgment, which is the basis on which Barack Obama has been running this campaign.

RUSH:  There was more, too, because Wallace said, "Juan, what do you think it says about Obama's character and his judgment?"

WILLIAMS:  Obama, who says he wants to be transracial, that he wants to be the crossover.  I mean, he is the fruit of a generation.  This is the closest black people have ever been to having a president of the United States of America.  And suddenly you see, wait a second, he's playing games and corners here on the race question.  He's not being straight ahead and saying, "You know what, I stand astride racial polarization." He's saying, "I play racial polarization at one moment to my advantage -- Reverend Wright -- next moment I will distance myself and disavow Reverend Wright when that's convenient, too."  That's why I say, for me it just strikes, wait a second, I want to know you, I want to know what you think and who you are, and in this case I realize, I don't.

RUSH:  That is exactly right.  What everybody is asking, is does Obama believe this stuff himself?  The reason they're asking the question is because he hasn't, up until he was forced, renounced parts of it.  He hasn't left the church.  He hasn't said one thing against Reverend J. Wright -- well, other than telling Reverend J. Wright he was too over the top in his sermons so he couldn't do the prayer at Obama's presidential announcement.  Look at it this way.  Why would Obama join a church like that?  He joins the church 20 years ago.  Now, 20 years ago, do we know what Obama's political ambitions were?  The Clintons say, yes, that in kindergarten he wrote essays on being president and they tried to club his ambition with that.  But 20 years ago do we really know -- I mean, I haven't read his book.  I'm sure he talks about it in his book, but 20 years ago, I don't want to guess here because it's obviously in his book, what he thought about his political future 20 years ago.  Then why else write the book?  But if he didn't, 20 years ago, if he wasn't thinking about a political career, if he was just thinking good-time community organization and so forth, he joins this church -- no, he has to have had a political future in mind.  

Now, did that include being president?  You know, he's half white and half black.  So if he's going to do politics in Chicago, he's gotta get a base.  What better way to get a base than go to this church, it's a mega church.  He goes there, and as it was suggested in some written piece last week, I forget who wrote it, but this was a way to establish his civil rights credentials, his street cred with that group that he's going to need support from in the political race.  But did he know 20 years ago, ten years ago, that he would be running for president or did he just think he would run for the state senate, maybe the United States Senate, but did he know that he was going to run for president?  If he knew ten years ago he was going to run for president, one might assume that he would get out of this church because he would have to anticipate that this stuff that's come now would come out.  So we might want to safely guess that he never saw himself running for president, and that's why he didn't quit the church.  But despite all that, it still comes down to this:  Does he believe this stuff?  That's what Juan Williams is saying.  We don't know.  No, we don't.  You can assume he doesn't because he sounds reasonable in his speeches when they're written, all fancy-dancy, but Bill Sammon in his book entitled Meet the Next President, talks about the beyond socialist philosophy of Reverend J. Wright.  

"Wright advocated a redistribution of wealth that went beyond socialism.  The congregation was required to embrace economic parity and disavow the pursuit of middleclassness."  Now, have we heard this from the Obama campaign?  Yes, we have.  "When, Rush, when?"  Let me call your attention to Michelle (My Belle) Obama, who was in Ohio. They went to a town where the employment and the per capita income are well below the national average and so forth, and she told women in that audience, don't go to corporate law firms, don't go into big business, don't go to work for corporations, and at the time, I said, okay, this is a nice little attack on Hillary, because Hillary had been a corporate lawyer and a board member at Wal-Mart.  But at the same time she's telling these people, don't seek high-paying jobs, go into the helping industry, go in and change bedpans, become nurses and nurses aides, all these other things.  She was advocating that people get themselves out of the so-called rat race, don't even get in a competition for income dollars, don't try to get on the middle-class track -- that wasn't her words, but she's urging people to do exactly what the philosophy of Reverend Wright's church is, folks.  So Juan Williams question, "Who is this guy? We don't know," is a good one.  

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Last year, April 30th, 2007, New York Times article: Reserved "Wright, who has long prided himself on criticizing the establishment, said he knew that he may not play well in Mr. Obama's audition for the ultimate establishment job. 'If Barack gets past the primary, he might have to publicly distance himself from me,' Mr. Wright said... 'I said it to Barack personally, and he said yeah, that might have to happen.'" Well, now, this is April 30th, 2007, not quite a year ago.  This is the second time now Reverend Wright has been found or discovered to have said things, that indicate Obama knew full well what Wright was saying.  So where does that take us?  That takes us to, is Obama lying?  Which takes us to character.  Is he lying when he says he didn't know what was going on in the church when he wasn't there?  Is he lying when asked, "Didn't some of the congregation members call you up and say, 'Well, you should have heard what you missed on Sunday,'?" and he said it never happened?  You know, one thing, Barack. I'm going to help you out here.  If you're going to try the lying routine, you're going to have to get better at it, because the standard for great liars has already been established; Bill Clinton owns it, and you're not in his league. You're going to have to really work on this and practice if you're going to try to go that route to get in the White House, and to stay there.  Listen to this.  Donna Brazile, This Week with George Stephanopoulos. He said, "Donna, why did this bubble up now, I guess, and why didn't he get ahead of it before?"

BRAZILE:  Because, look, we're at a moment in the campaign where the kitchen sink strategy is in full force, the vetting is in full force.  I've known Jeremiah Wright -- and actually Jeremiah Wright is one of the more moderate black preachers.  Just go to a church down the street from my house, and I see people, women, coming with their hats on the other side of their heads because they have been lifted up.

RUSH:  What?  Hats on the other side of their head because they have been lifted up? This guy is one of the more moderate black preachers?  Mark Halperin, TIME.com, in the roundtable discussion, responded to this.

HALPERIN:  Here's why I think it matters a lot.  The only chance Hillary Clinton has of being the nominee -- the only chance I believe John McCain has of beating Barack Obama if they face each other -- is if he is defined as an unacceptable either general election candidate for the Democrats, or president in a general election.  And this goes... is the biggest challenge, I think, he's faced on that front.  He's still introducing himself to the American people.  The right-wing attack machine -- cable news, talk radio, the Internet -- went crazy on this, and they will not stop.

RUSH:  And so Brazile added this.

BRAZILE:  His narrative is someone who's trying to bring reconciliation, and that generation, uh, wanted to basically talk about recrimination, and I think that's the strong thing that Barack has to navigate.  I'm sure he sat in church when the preacher says something that would make white people uncomfortable.  I've sat in church when I've been uncomfortable.

HALPERIN:  Well, there's a difference between uncomfortable and rhetoric that is absolutely disqualifying.  Again, I'm thinking in the short term, do the Democrats want to send him into the general election as their nominee?

BRAZILE:  He has repudiated and denounced those comments.  What else can he do?  He's not going to renounce the Good Lord Jesus Christ.

RUSH:  So apparently we have a strategy here, folks, that's played out really well.  Obama embraces the guy, and they planned -- they knew a year ago -- that if Barack Obama got this far, he's going to have to distance himself from Wright; Wright knew it, and Wright was cool with it.  So they've been waiting for this moment to happen.  They were prepared for it. I don't think well.  I think Barack has not handled this well at all, but, regardless, it is what it is. 

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Julie in Crooked River Ranch, Oregon.  Great to have you here.

CALLER:  Thanks, it's great to be here.  I love your show today.

RUSH:  Thank you.

CALLER:  Yeah, I mean, the preacher man really handed you some juicy stuff to work with.

RUSH:  Well, the whole Democrat Party has been handing me stuff here.  It's more fun, it's a blast.

CALLER:  I nearly fell over when I saw those videos.  I mean, it was perfect, just perfect.

RUSH:  Reverend J. Wright?

CALLER:  Yes.

RUSH:  Yeah.

CALLER:  He's something else, isn't he?

RUSH:  And then some.

CALLER:  Yeah.  And I believe that Obama is either a liar or he is stupid.  And he must think we're all stupid.

RUSH:  He's lying.

CALLER:  Yes, he's lying.  He has to be.

RUSH:  There's no question about he's lying.

CALLER:  Yeah, with his ears the size as they are, he had to have heard that.

RUSH:  He had to have heard about it.

CALLER:  Yeah.

RUSH:  Wait a second.  Don't go the ear route.  

CALLER:  Yeah, I know, I take it back.  That wasn't very nice.

RUSH:  Don't tell me what your 12-year-old thinks of him.  We don't want to even do that.

CALLER:  No, no, no, I guess that wasn't very nice.  It just annoys me to no end.

RUSH:  What, his ears?

CALLER:  No.  The video thing with the preacher.

RUSH:  Yeah, yeah.

CALLER:  You know, and all that rhetoric.  And then he had to go and take a jab at Bill and saying he was riding dirty and all that, and I can't believe that went on in church in front of the children.  I mean, my parents would have ushered us out of there so quick and we would have told everybody in town and never went back.

RUSH:  Yeah, well, that's what Obama's going to make a speech about tomorrow, because he wants to explain to people the black church culture and what they think in there.  I'm going to be keeping a sharp eye on this speech, because he is lying about not knowing what goes in there, because we know it from Reverend Wright himself.  Wright, in two interviews in the New York Times, has let it be known perfectly clear that Obama was well aware of Wright's sermons and that's why there was a planned moment in the campaign where they're going to have to distance themselves from one another, and that has happened, was all planned because Obama knew what was being said there.  

END TRANSCRIPT

Read the Background Material...

• HotAir: Video: Juan Williams Lowers the Boom on Obama

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/03/16/video-juan-williams-lowers-the-boom-on-obama/

• New York Times: A Candidate, His Minister and the Search for Faith - 04.30.07

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/us/politics/30obama.html?_r=4&pagewanted=all&oref=login&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

• NRO: Axelrod: A "Major" Reason Wright Didn't Speak At Obama's Announcement Was...It Was Too Cold - Byron York

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZGJhMWQ3NjUwYmI4N2E3MGEzNzc2YTI1MGE0MjMyYzM=

• American Thinker: Obama-Wright Threatens to Derail the Candidate

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/03/obamawright_threatens_to_derai.html

• NRO: Uncle Jeremiah. Barack Obama and His Cookie-Cutter Race Huckster - Mark Steyn

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZjE3NDc3YTU0ZGM5NGEzZTdkNjcyZjBiNDVjMjU5MGQ=

• NRO: The Wright Questions. What Did Obama Hear, and When Did He Hear It?

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MTM4MGVjNzBhMDMxYWI3NjA3NTkzNTA0NjQ0NWJjMDM=

• AS: Wrighting Dirty. Obama's Longtime Pastor Gives Him that Old-Time Racism

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12904

• NewsBusters: Contrary to Claims, Obama Very Close With Racist Preacher, Wright

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-todd-huston/2008/03/16/contrary-claims-obama-very-close-racist-preacher-wright

• Politico: Obama's Pastor: The Backstory

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0308/9051.html

• AP: Obama Decries Racial Rhetoric

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8VEE9OO0&show_article=1

• VIDEO: Jeremiah Wright and "God (Bleep) America"

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/03/13/video-jeremiah-wright-and-god-damn-america/

• VIDEO: Obama's Pastor Takes Highly Nuanced Approach to Racial Divisiveness

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/03/13/video-obamas-pastor-takes-highly-nuanced-approach-to-racial-divisiveness/