April 28, 2008

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RUSH: I watched some of Reverend Wright this morning at the National Press Club.  It seems obvious to me that he's doing everything he can to wipe out Obama's candidacy, and I'll tell you why I think it is.  I think that people like Reverend Wright -- and I think there are a lot of other race business hustlers out there, by the way, who think this -- really upset that if a black candidate is elected president, that they're going to be somehow diminished in their task, at keeping everybody in their flocks all revved up and angry about the ages old sin of slavery and the ongoing discrimination.  

So it appears to me, if you look at Reverend Wright, listen to what he says and analyze it from the context or perspective of what's best for him, which is clearly all he's interested in, what's best for him is that if Obama loses, because then it's easy for him to say, "See, the white power structure doesn't want a black man to rise to the pinnacle of power in the United States of America."  It would certainly fuel Reverend Wright's future and continue to help him raise money and keep people whipped up into a frenzy.  He's not helpful.  Whatever he thinks he's doing, it is not helpful to Barack Obama. 

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RUSH: Now, you tell me if you think that this is the Reverend Jeremiah Wright trying to help Barack Obama.  "The Rev. Jeremiah Wright said Monday that he will try to change national policy by 'coming after' Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) if he is elected president.   The pastor also insisted Obama 'didn't denounce' him and 'didn't distance himself' from Wright's controversial remarks, but 'did what politicians do.'  Wright implied Obama still agrees with him by saying: 'He had to distance himself, because he's a politician, from what the media was saying I had said, which was [portrayed as] anti-American. I said to Barack Obama last year, "If you get elected, November the 5th I'm coming after you, because you'll be representing a government whose policies grind under people."'"

Is this helpful to Barack Obama?  Once again, he has just destroyed the entire reason for Obama's success, and that is he's a messiah; he's a new kind of politician; he's a politician we haven't seen before; he's a politician which has never, ever trod the land of glory that is the United States of America. Barack Obama is brand-new, nobody ever, ever has been like him, and here comes Reverend Wright, (paraphrasing) "Eh, just your average run-of-the-mill politician. He had to say what he said," meaning there's nothing new, nothing unique, nothing distinct about Barack Obama.  He's just a politician.  And then Reverend Wright says he gonna go after him, he's gonna keep on him to change America the way Reverend Wright wants.

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RUSH: John in Libertyville, Illinois.  Let me just deal with this rather than talk to him off the air.  John, are you there?  Hello, John.  Welcome to the program.

CALLER:  Hi, and thanks for taking my call.

RUSH:  Yes, John.

CALLER:  I read an editorial in the Chicago Tribune I thought was pretty illuminating that pointed out that Reverend Wright had given up a student deferment and chosen to join the Marines to go serve in Vietnam and later became a Navy corpsman and served at Bethesda Naval Hospital where he treated then president -- he was part of the medical team that treated Lyndon Johnson and received commendation letters from the White House.  Now, I know that Dick Cheney used five deferments to avoid service in Vietnam, and Bill Clinton had a student deferment, and you yourself had a medical deferment.  And I'm just wondering, if Reverend Wright's comments are fair game, wouldn't it be more honest to assess the man based on the trajectory of his whole life experience rather than just a couple of statements?  I've never heard you mention anything about his honorable service to our country.

RUSH:  I've mentioned it before.  We've played tapes of Obama talking about him having served in the Marines.  Lee Harvey Oswald was in the Marines, too, ahem, in the sharpshooter division.  I don't think that alone has anything to do with it.  We examine everybody in the current context as to what they're saying about the country.  These are not snippets.  In fact, the more of these sermons you listen to, the worse it gets.  These are not just a little couple of comments taken out of context with Reverend Wright.  This is one angry, livid, enraged individual, and Obama's got a serious problem with him now.  You may not want to admit it and the Democrats and the superdelegates may not want to admit it publicly, but they've got serious problems here.  This guy is undermining the Obama candidacy.

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RUSH: Reverend Jeremiah Wright: We're all victims.  Those of us in the black church and those of us who are black; we are all victims. We are intellectual victims, but we are all victims.  Even the editor at Salon.com can no longer explain Reverend Wright and wonders if he's trying to ruin Obama.  Joan Walsh is no friend of mine, no friend of this program. She's a huge feminazi on the left.  Joan Walsh, editor of the liberal website Salon.com... Well, let me take it back. She's not a feminazi.  I take that back.  She's just a leftist, period.  But this is what she wrote:  

"[T]he whole idea that Wright has been attacked over 'soundbites,' and if Americans saw his entire sermons, in context, they'd feel differently, now seems ludicrous. The long clips Moyers played [on PBS] only confirm what was broadcast in the snippets (and the longer excerpts out today are even more troubling). ... He used his hour with Moyers to argue that his thoroughgoing critique of American evil is, well, true.   And I'm on the left. I know huge chunks of it are true. But Wright casts his critique in such an extreme way that the possibility of redemption, the evidence that America can and has and will change for the better, is never considered. ... Watching Wright and Moyers I also couldn't help thinking: Is Wright trying to ruin Obama? I don't have an answer" to that, but I do have a theory. My theory is that one of the worst things that could happen to Jeremiah Wright's race business is to have Obama in the White House, not because of what Obama would or wouldn't do.

My theory is that it would be far better for Jeremiah Wright for Obama to lose because that will give him a whole new launch pad for his America-is-racist-and-hates-black-people comment, that America is run by "rich white people" who couldn't handle the prospect of a black man being president; and Barack was beaten down by the same forces that have kept blacks down since slavery, blah, blah, blah. The bilge and the drivel that he argues.  In all seriousness, folks; if the Democrat Party and if Barack Obama had any say-so whatsoever, this guy would be hibernating. He'd be on a permanent vacation until November. Nobody would be able to find him. He certainly wouldn't be speaking publicly.  But he's out there doing it.  Now, last week I thought this was a rehabilitation tour to make Reverend Wright a teddy bear and to show the American people that the man in these sermons, the snippets of sermons that we've seen is not who he really is, but that's off the boards now.  That's not possible now because he's only exacerbating the problem that he has with the American people.  He is a radical. He is anti-American. He is an extremist. He's doing nothing to mollify that and he's not helping Obama in the process.  As we always do, when we listen to the latest Jeremiah Wright sound bites, we always start with just one example, a montage of his various sermons from the years 2000 through 2007.

WRIGHT (screaming):  Barack knows what it means to be a black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people!  [snip] Hillary ain't never been called a nigger! [snip] Bill did us just like he did Monica Lewinsky!

CONGREGATION: (cheers)

WRIGHT: He was riding dirty. [snip]  In white America, US of KKKA: black men turning on black men. [snip]  I am sick of Negroes who just do not get it. [snip]  Not God bless America, God (bleep) America! It's in the Bible. For killing innocent people, God (bleep) America! [snip] (Screaming) And now we are indignant because of stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards!

CONGREGATION: (cheers)

WRIGHT:  America's chickens are coming home...to roost.

RUSH:  There you have the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.  Now we go this morning to the DC National Press Club.  After he spoke, the moderator says, "Senator Obama has tried to explain away some of your most contentious comments, has distanced himself from you.  It's clear that many people in his campaign consider you a detriment. In that context, why are you speaking out now?"

WRIGHT:  This is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright. It has nothing to do with Senator Obama.  This is an attack on the black church launched by people who know nothing about the African-American religious tradition.  In our community we have something called "playing the dozens."  If you think I'm going to let you talk about my mama --

AUDIENCE: (laughing and hooting)

WRIGHT: -- and her religious tradition and my daddy and his religious tradition and my grandma, you got another think coming.

AUDIENCE: (cheers and applause)

RUSH:  There's a threat, another threat! Now, here's what's wrong with this.  The black church in this country is not typical of Reverend Wright's church.  This is something, however -- and this ought to infuriate churchgoing black people.  The idea that what happens in Reverend Wright's church is what happens in your church and is what happens in all black churches in this country, is absolutely ridiculous.  This is not common.  This is liberation theology, and there's a lot of it out there, but it is not the dominant way that preachers in black churches preach.  It's an insult.  We are all victims here, and it's an attempt to say that Reverend Wright's not that different than anybody else. It's just he happens to have been publicized because a presidential candidate goes to his church.  This is extreme.  This is somewhat unique.  It is not common.  The next question: "Can you explain what you meant shortly after 9/11 when you said the United States had brought the terrorist attacks on itself and about America's chickens are 'coming home to roost'?"

WRIGHT:  I was quoting the ambassador from Iraq.  That's number one.  But number two, to quote the Bible: "Be not deceived; God is not mocked. For what so ever you sow that you also shall..."

MOYERS:  Reap!

WRIGHT:  Jesus said, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."  You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you.  Those are biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic divisive principles.

RUSH:  Yeah. The problem with this analysis is -- and it's very simple -- it is a problem we face in this country. We are the good guys in the world.  The United States is the solution to problems.   I don't remember who said this, but it's right on the money.  "Darfur is the world.  The United States and western democracies are the exception."  Most places in the world have riots, unrest. They are dictatorships with protesting people. They are people that live in squalid circumstances under dictatorial rule.  The United States is different.  The United States is, as Reagan called it, "the shining city on the hill," along with most of the other western democracies.  What Reverend Wright fails to agree with and what he actively disagrees with, is that we're the good guys; that we are the solution to the world's problems.  Would it offend any of you if I said, Darfur or Zimbabwe or Congo, any of these countries -- take North Korea, I don't care; I don't want to make it simply a racial thing. Take any land of squalor. Would it not be better if those countries operated like the United States of America?  

Would it not be better if there were more United States of Americas out there in terms of lifestyle, freedom, quality of life for people?  Yet to guys like Jeremiah Wright, we're the problem.  We created all this poverty -- and he's not the only one.  There are a tremendous amount of American leftists who think the same thing.  That's why all these actors get on their high horse about Darfur.  In their minds, it's ultimately our fault.  It's not the fault of dictators, militant Muslims.  It's like in Ethiopia. The first objective of Ethiopia was to get people food because there was a famine there, and so we have Live Aid and all these Bob Geldof concerts.  What Geldof himself even learned was that the only reason there was a famine there -- and this was the same thing in Somalia, by the way -- was a famine there was that the emperor was denying people food! He wanted 'em to starve to death.  Communists kill their populations -- or they'll do anything they can, including kill them to control them. Starve them or whatever, keep them from rebelling.  

This, thus, becomes our problem because we somehow have stolen all the world's resources. We have stolen all the goodness of the world. We've made it our own, and then we don't share it (which is cockamamie BS), and thus we become the enemy.  So in Jeremiah Wright's eyes, we're not the good guys.  And if you live in this country and don't understand that we are the good guys -- that we are the solution to the world's problems -- then you're going to end up hating this country, and he does.  He has a smooth little game here to say, "Hey, I wasn't saying any of that! Jesus said it.  I wasn't saying any of that; the Bible said it.  I wasn't saying any of that; the ambassador from Iraq was saying it."  Yeah. At the time, the ambassador from Iraq was appointed by Saddam Hussein.  So let's side with that regime over the United States of America, Reverend Wright.  But that's his game plan.  "We're all victims."  Hey, he's just trying to be loyal to the Scripture. He's trying to say that the country's not his god, that Jesus is.  Another question: "What's your relationship with [Calypso] Louie Farrakhan?  Do you agree with and respect his views?"

WRIGHT: One of our n-n-news channels keeps playing a -- a -- a news clip from 20 years ago, when Louis said 20 years ago that Zionism, not Judaism, was a gutter religion.  He was talking about the same thing United Nations resolutions say, the same thing now that President Carter is being vilified for and Bishop Tutu is being vilified for; and everybody wants to paint me as if I'm anti-Semitic because of what Louis Farrakhan said 20 years ago.  When Louis Farrakhan speaks, it's like E. F. Hutton speaks: all black America listens.  Whether they agree with him or not, they listen.  Now, I am not going to put down Louis Farrakhan any more than Mandela would put down Fidel Castro.  You remember that Ted Koppel show, where Ted wanted Mandela to put down Castro because Castro is our enemy.  And he said, "You don't tell me who my enemies are. You don't tell me who my friends are." Louis Farrakhan is not my enemy.  He did not put me in chains, he did not put me in slavery, and he didn't make me this color.

RUSH:  Well, uh, neither did anyone else alive today, Reverend Wright -- and you've never been in chains, Reverend Wright.  Um, you've never been in slavery, Reverend Wright.  Quite the opposite! Your church just got you a $1.6 million house in a white neighborhood.  How is that possible if you've been all chained up, if you've been enslaved?  You haven't been enslaved, and you have not been in chains.  God made you black, and you're telling everybody that the only thing that matters to you is God, and Jesus. Yet God made you this color that caused you to be enslaved and in chains.  This is not helpful to Barack Obama -- and to praise Jimmy Carter? (laughs) To praise Fidel Castro? He is clearly letting it be known that he sides with people who also do not consider the United States to be the good guys.

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RUSH:  I don't know how many times I have seen this over the course of my life.  Some controversial civil rights leader will come up and say we need to have an honest dialogue on race.  My whole life that's all we've been doing in this country is having a conversation on race.  It never goes away because there are race business proponents who never want it to go away.  And now Reverend Wright is out there saying he hopes that his speeches and his support for Obama will spawn a national conversation on race.  It's happening, Reverend Wright, and you have spawned it, and you've spawned it in a way detrimental to your own cause and your own candidate.  Here's Wright saying he would come after Obama if he's president.

WRIGHT:  I said to Barack Obama last year, if you get elected November the 5th I'm coming after you because you'll be representing a government whose policies grind under people, all right?  It's about policy, not the American people.  You know that's biblical.  God doesn't bless everything.  God condemns something. God damns some practices.  And there is no excuse for the things that the government -- not the American people -- have done until racism and slavery are confessed and asked for forgiveness.  Britain has apologized to Africans.  But this country's leaders have refused to apologize.  So until that apology comes, I'm not going to keep stepping on your foot and asking you, "Does this hurt? Do you forgive me for stepping on your foot," if I'm still stepping on your foot.  Understand that?  Capeesh?

RUSH:  So according to Reverend Wright, we still have slavery, slavery is still going on in this country, discrimination and slavery and the chains are out, and nobody's apologized, and we're still enslaving people.  Now, this is frankly and patently absurd, but this is what Wright wants his flock to think.  This is nothing but hate speech, folks. Race based hate speech.  I love watching the Drive-Bys analyze this.  CNN, (paraphrasing) "Oh, what a great speech this was," and they said his NAACP speech in Michigan, the same way, what a great, great speech it was.  They are so in the tank for Obama.  By the way, as we said when we first heard these speeches, sermons of Reverend Wright, why there was so little condemnation in the Drive-By Media.  You'd be amazed how many people agree with this guy about this kind of stuff on the American left.  Dislike or hatred for your country does not know racial barriers.  It appeals to quite a few people, and he's simply trying to capitalize on this.  By the way, what is this business of an apology?  Bill Clinton had to have done it because Bill Clinton ran all over the world and apologized for this country.  Did Clinton not apologize for slavery?  Didn't he do that when he became the first black president? He was the first black president. He went over to Africa dressed up in native garb.  

This is to me just amazing that this is happening, that it is obviously detrimental to Obama's campaign, and you have to wonder if Wright doesn't know this.  (interruption) Okay, what's the question?  Mr. Snerdley, the program observer, has a question.  All right, what's the question?  Hm-hm.  Hm-hm.  Hm-hm.  Well, okay, the question is this:  If an apology, as Reverend Wright called for it in that sound bite, if an apology was forthcoming from the right people, and if that would solve all this, why doesn't somebody apologize?  It's an excellent question, and you want to know the answer?  You know the answer.  An apology would be an acknowledgement by people alive today of guilt, and it would allow the civil rights coalitions and the Jeremiah Wrights of the world to say, "See, you admit it. You admit you are enslaving us to this day."  The apology would be taken as an admission by those of us alive today that slavery still happens, that Wright and his cronies are still in chains and so forth, and that would start the reparations ball rolling, officially.  "Okay, so you apologize for it, fine, we want to be paid for it, we want reparations, we want this.  And since you apologized for it, you have got five or ten more generations of making up for it since you now admit it.  You've been going half-assed at affirmative action, half-assed at all these remedial measures.  Now that you admit it, now we're going all the way, brother.  Now we're going reparations and you are going for the next 50 or hundred years let us have what we want."

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RUSH:  Hey, folks, it's not just me.  A whole bunch of leftists in the Drive-By Media and the Democrat Party are pulling their hair out today.  They can't get over what Jeremiah Wright is doing.  He's being destructive to the Obama campaign, and these guys are in the tank for Obama.  You have to understand, the media, I don't care if it's the sports media, I don't care if it's the Drive-By news media, they've all got this guilt.  They are ladled with all this white guilt. They agree with Reverend Wright when he talks about slavery and bondage and chains even today.  They feel personally responsible for it, and they think their salvation and their feeling good about themselves is opposing discrimination and accepting the premise that slavery-like conditions to this day still exist.  So supporting Obama is a way for them -- it's the old "Magic Negro" thing -- it's a way for them to assuage their guilt, to show everybody what good people they are and so forth, and they hate this.  Guess what it is that is bringing down Obama?  In addition to Operation Chaos, it's race.  It is race.  The racial divide in this country is in the Democrat Party, and it is on full display for the American people to see.  

The Civil War is still being fought in this country in the Democrat Party.  Race is bringing down the candidacy, and harming it greatly, of Obama.  What's fascinating about that is that before all this stuff started hitting the fan, Obama was getting away with being what everybody was calling a post-racial candidate, meaning he was black, but that's not why he was there.  The fact that he was black shows everybody how we have moved on, we have gotten past the hurdle of our sin-laced and slavery oriented past, and Obama could do it without touting himself as a black.  He was just a messiah.  His skin color didn't matter.  Well, now, of course, race is all his candidacy has become.  That is what it's about.  This is a 180 that nobody foresaw, because liberals, typical as they are, couldn't care less about the substance of anything.  It was all about the image, it was all about the packaging, it was all about how somebody made them feel, and people were swooning and people were fainting at rallies, "Obama!" and everybody was going nuts with this.  

Now he's just a man, not a messiah, he's just a man, very inexperienced, has no behavior that is at all similar to the campaign he's running.  He's running on a campaign of unity, running on a campaign of crossing aisles, working together with people, bringing people together.  Doesn't do that, hasn't done that.  He's a hard-core, fanatical, extremist liberal, and that is what's becoming known by his associations.  By the way, Senator Salazar, I have a question for you, sir.  I know that you are uncommitted as a Democrat superdelegate, but would you dare send Barack Obama a letter asking him to reprimand Bill Ayers?  Do you realize that Obama has friends who have blown up buildings?  Obama, Senator Salazar, actually has friends who have set off bombs and have said they wish they could have done more.  Obama has not distanced himself from these people.  Barack Obama actually has close-friend relationships with known, admitted domestic terrorists, and yet you send me a letter demanding that I be reprimanded for tongue-in-cheek comments about so-called riots in Denver that have been alluded to by Democrats already, because the Democrats have this history.  

It's liberal Democrats that riot.  It's liberal Democrats that cause civil unrest.  It's liberal Democrats that do this.  So I think if you're going to start sending out letters demanding people be reprimanded, you need to send one to Obama asking him to reprimand and denounce Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn.  Anyway, back to the audio sound bites with Reverend Wright, another question, after his speech, "Senator Obama has been in your congregation for 20 years and yet you were not invited to his announcement of his candidacy in Illinois, and in the most recent presidential debate in Pennsylvania he said he had denounced you.  Are you disappointed Senator Obama has chosen to walk away from you?"

WRIGHT:  He did not denounce me.  He distanced himself from some of my remarks, like most of you, never having heard the sermon, all right.  I was not invited because that was a political event.  Let me say again, I'm his pastor.  At a political event, who started it off?  Senator Dick Durbin.  I started it off downstairs with him, his wife, and children in prayer.  That's what pastors do.  So I started it off in prayer --

RUSH:  Wait, this is at variance with what we have heard.  What we have heard was that Wright was invited and was scheduled to appear publicly and say something publicly on the day Obama in Illinois announced his presidential campaign and at the last moment Obama went to him and said, (paraphrasing) "You know, your sermons are sometimes a little bit over the top here, I'm going to keep you downstairs."  So, again, we don't know who to believe here.  We don't know whether to believe the messiah.  We don't know whether to believe the lying anti-American pastor.  Either way, it's not helpful.  Next question: "In your sermon, you said the government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color.  So I ask you, do you honestly believe your statement and those words?"

WRIGHT:  Based on the Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything.  In fact, in fact, in fact, one of the responses to what Saddam Hussein had in terms of biological warfare was a nonquestion because all we had to do was check the sales record.  We sold him those biological weapons that he was using against his own people.  So any time a government can put together biological warfare to kill people and then get angry with those people use what we sold them, yes, I believe we are capable.

RUSH:  So there you have it.  Jeremiah Wright at the National Press Club confirms his belief that the United States created AIDS in order to wipe out black people.  Obama did say that he had disowned Reverend Wright, after saying that he couldn't.  Obama's all over the path on this, he's all over the ballpark on all of this.  Barack Obama says things -- for example, with Chris Wallace yesterday, said, capital gains tax, maybe raise it 20%.  You said a couple weeks ago you'd raise it to 28 or 30%.  Then you said I'm not going to raise taxes on people in the middle class.  Then he said he's going to by virtue of raising the payroll ceiling from $102,000, the payroll tax, FICA, upwards from 102,000 -- he's all over the place, and this is just a fact of inexperience.  And, frankly, what we said last week, Obama doesn't think he ought to be questioned about these things.   He thinks he's above it.  Sort of like the Clintons were in '92-93:  Look it, we're so important you can't treat us the way you treat normal candidates, we are too important.

That's the way Obama views himself, and it derives strictly from the way he was raised in the university. This is strictly an academic elitist liberalism that he has, particularly black academic elitism that he has, same thing with Jeremiah Wright.  He's actually clueless as to what it is that makes this country work, who the people are who make it work, and I don't know that Obama actually looks at the United States and sees us as the good guys because you're not taught that in university.  In the Ivy League, Stanford, you go out in the major, major institutions of higher learning, you are taught America is the enemy; you're taught America is the bad guy; you're taught to believe that your country has done rotten, evil things, more than it has done good things.  So it's not surprising to me that Obama also carries into his daily existence that world view. 

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Read the Background Material...

• Politico: Wright to Obama: 'Coming After You'

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0408/9912.html

• AP: Wright Says Criticism is Attack on Black Church

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D90ATHHO0&show_article=1

• Washington Post: Mississippi Republican Runs Ad Against Obama

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/04/28/mississippi_republican_runs_ad.html

• NRO: If You Can't Jump or Dance, You Can't Understand Me, Wright Explains- Henry Payne

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NjdmMmMwNGRjZjcxNThjMzA4MGFiMzE5Y2EwOGUyM2E=

• FOX: Rev. Wright Takes His Message Directly to the Media

http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/04/28/rev-wright-takes-his-message-directly-to-the-media/

• NewsBusters: William Safire Savages Moyers' 'Loving Conversation' with Rev. Wright

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2008/04/28/william-safire-savages-moyers-loving-conversation-rev-wright

April 28, 2008

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RUSH: To Dallas, this is Marilyn.  Glad you called, Marilyn.  Nice to have you here.

CALLER:  Yes, Rush.  It's so good to talk to you!

RUSH:  Thank you.

CALLER:  I'm calling because I know using Obama's religion and the sermons, are taking him off guard. But I am so worried about religion being thrown into this, because I think it eliminates any chance that Romney might be picked as a vice presidential candidate, because that would open the field for them to use his Mormonism against him.

RUSH:  I don't think it's going to Romney anyway, but the Jeremiah Wright stuff is not really about religion.

CALLER:  Well, there's such a thin line, though, between racism and religion.

RUSH:  No, but it's not even about racism.  The racism is in the Democrat Party.  Let me tell you what the Reverend Wright stuff is really all about.  It's religious to the extent that he's a pastor.  What the Jeremiah Wright stuff is all about is: Just who the hell are Obama's friends?  It's not just Jeremiah Wright. 

It's terrorists -- Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn -- who are still attempting to infect and pollute the American college student with anti-American rhetoric.  They're blowing the country up with bombs, now.  He has questionable relationships with sleazy people, with people that we would not want anywhere near having influence in the Oval Office.  Jeremiah Wright's problems do not stem from his religion; so much as they stem from his hatred of this country, for his rabble-rousing and his conspiratorial beliefs about this evils of this country and its government. Obama has said that he's a "spiritual advisor" and "mentor."  He's been in that church for 20 years.  You choose your pastor.  It is simply unbelievable to hear Obama say that he was unaware that Wright believed these things or said these things for 20 years.  Obama is a calculating Chicago machine politician who knew that he needed a black church to give him street cred should he seek public office beyond the state of Illinois.  He refuses to get out of this situation with Bill Ayers.  The real question is: Who's Obama?  We know who Wright is.  Who's Obama, now? -- and do we take the chance?  We know who Bill Ayers is.  We know what he's done and we know he's proud of it.  Who's Obama?  Obama has tried to hide who he really is, but it's now coming out.  Really, this has nothing to do with religion.

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RUSH:  You know, all this talk about it's been so difficult to Obama to leave his pastor.  That's not what happened.  Wright retired.  Obama's pastor left him!  Who is Obama's pastor now?  It's a good question.  Is it the new guy that replaced Wright at the church in Chicago?

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RUSH: Here's Don in Vermilion, Ohio.  Don, I'm glad you waited.  Welcome to the EIB Network, sir.

CALLER:  Thank you, Rush.  I almost missed you.  I had to take a quick commercial break there.  Reverend Wright, when he came back out with his first interview the other day, he said that he'd never talked politics to Barack Obama.  I really believe that one.  And Barack Obama says the same thing.  He also, at the end of his show, plugged his new book that's coming out two or three months, is that why he came back out?  

RUSH:  Yeah, it might be.  Everybody wants money.

CALLER:  Yes.

RUSH:  And nobody has enough.  And the liberals try to tell other people they have enough but for them it's never enough.  Reverend Wright just had a house given to him in a white neighborhood with a $10 million line of credit in addition to the $1.6 million house.

CALLER:  Poor people.

RUSH:  Yeah.  Look it, of course he's out there trying to sell a book.  But that is poppycock to say that he and Obama never discussed politics.  Wright's sermons are politics.  We had a caller not long ago, "I really resent religion being part of the campaign."  This is not religion.  The Democrats have injected race, anti-Americanism, and all kinds of extreme radical politics into this campaign.  This isn't about religion.

CALLER:  Well, him and Barack Obama both have said that the sermon that he gave, the snippets are all about, that that was an old sermon, six years old, and six years ago he wouldn't have been comparing Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton.  So this is a sermon he brought back out--

RUSH:  Well, let's not sharpen our pencils too much here.  There are a lot of sermons from 2000 to 2007 that have been mangled and so forth.  The point is people have now gotten their hands on all of these sermons.  It's even worse.  Plus Jeremiah Wright's out there saying, hey, I'm not the one who said America's chickens are come home to roost, our ambassador to Iraq said it.  Well, the ambassador to Iraq, Mr. Peck, has just told Fox News he didn't say what he said I said. (paraphrasing) "I didn't say what Obama's preacher said I said about chickens coming home to roost or, you know, 9/11 being a product of our terrorism around the world."  None of these guys can be straight.  That's another thing that argues against Obama being some kind of new politician.  He's not.  There's no such thing.  We have seen in this country since our founding every possible configuration of politician.  It is not possible for one to come along who has never come along before.  It is not possible for a politician to come along and espouse policies or have a charismatic attitude or a prescription to fix all that's wrong that has not come before.  They're a dime a dozen.  Some are better than others because some are more sincere than others.  But the idea that we're going to get somebody new that has never before trod the earth as a politician leading us out of bondage or whatever has got us in bondage, it's all poppycock.  It's all marketing and packaging brought to us by the sycophants in the Drive-By Media. 

END TRANSCRIPT

Read the Background Material...

• American Thinker: Obama's 'Mainstream' Friends

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/04/obamas_mainstream_friends.html

April 29, 2008

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  Correct me if I'm wrong here.  He just threw Jeremiah Wright under the bus, and the train.  He totally disowned him, right?  Did he use the word?  Barack Obama is giving that press conference now that I was misunderinformed.  I was told it was going to happen later this afternoon.  But he said he is upset that Reverend Wright is the focus of attention; that Wright doesn't speak for him or for his campaign; he doesn't associate himself with any of Wright's statements.  He's called his statements appalling, the statements that Reverend Wright is making.  The question now is, and this is what Obama should have done early on, but he was trying to be nice to Wright, he was trying to have it both ways here. Wright didn't take it that way. Wright probably thought he was thrown under the bus and the train back in the Philadelphia speech.  If Wright had any doubt about it, that doubt has been settled today because today he was thrown under the bus, thrown under the train, thrown under the airplane, even flushed down the sewer by Barack Obama.  

So the question is, is this too late?  Is it too late?  Should he have done this out of the box?  Yup, there it is, "Wright does not speak for me or my campaign."  We're working feverishly at headquarters here securing audio sound bites, the appropriate sound bites of the Obama comments.  I don't want to JIP this.  We'll have the comments in due course.  The question now is, is it too late?  A lot of people are going to think that it is too late.  And of course it will be interesting to see now, what does Wright do?  What will Wright's reaction be?  People are speculating here that Wright's doing what he's doing now because he felt he was thrown under the bus back in the Philadelphia speech.  Now he's been thrown under the train and flushed down the toilet into the sewer, will he now come back and really unload on Obama?  And he could!  Obama's been in that church 20 years.  Reverend Wright baptized Obama's kids.  So it's fireworks out there.  Operation Chaos.  This would not have happened without Operation Chaos, ladies and gentlemen, because Mrs. Clinton would be gone, and with Mrs. Clinton gone, none of this could have been done, nothing could have been done about it, so it wouldn't have been any kind of a story at all.  There are numerous Jeremiah Wright stories in the Stack of Stuff here today as well as sound bites.  

This is a column by Errol Louis in the New York Daily News:  "The Rev. Jeremiah Wright couldn't have done more damage to Barack Obama's campaign if he had tried. And you have to wonder if that's just what one friend of Wright wanted."  Get this.  "Shortly before he rose to deliver his rambling, angry, sarcastic remarks at the National Press Club Monday, Wright sat next to, and chatted with, Barbara Reynolds."  I remember Barbara Reynolds.  She's a former member of the editorial board at USA Today.  She had her own little byline column there.  "She runs something called Reynolds News Service and teaches ministry at the Howard University School of Divinity. (She is an ordained minister).  It also turns out that Reynolds -- introduced Monday as a member of the National Press Club 'who organized' the event -- is an enthusiastic Hillary Clinton supporter."

Yes, ladies and gentlemen!  The woman who secured and organized Reverend Wright's appearance at the press club is a Hillary Clinton supporter, Barbara Reynolds.  "On a blog linked to her website ... Reynolds said in a February post: 'My vote for Hillary in the Maryland primary was my way of saying thank you' to Clinton and her husband for the successes of Bill Clinton's presidency.  The same post criticized Obama's 'Audacity of Hope' theme: 'Hope by definition is not based on facts,' wrote Reynolds. 'It is an emotional expectation. Things hoped for may or may not come. But help based on experience trumps hope every time.'" So this woman is not only plugging for Hillary, she's out there berating Obama's entire campaign theme.  "In another blog entry, Reynolds gives an ever-sharper critique of Obama: 'It is a sad testimony that to protect his credentials as a unifier above the fray, the senator is fueling the media characterization that Rev. Dr. Wright is some retiring old uncle in the church basement.'"  So she thinks that this guy is a nutcase from way back and that Obama has not been honest about his relationship.  And she is the one who organized the appearance of Reverend Wright at the National Press Club on Monday.  

Look, let's cut to the chase here.  You have a Hillary operative securing Wright's performance at the press club, which has been universally condemned as unhelpful, and worse than that, very damaging to the Obama campaign.  Obama just said, "I am clearly, unequivocally denouncing Reverend Wright's comments.  Whatever relationship I had with Reverend Wright has changed now."  The next thing, he'll apologize to his grandmother.  He's gotta fix that.  He insulted his grandmother.  Typical white person.  He's gotta apologize to his grandmother.  He's thrown Wright overboard now.  He has unequivocally denounced Reverend Wright's comments.  The wheels of the Obama campaign are coming off.  They came off a long time ago, now we're skidding to a stop, have gone off the rails.  The Obama camp and the campaign is about to be derailed in a cornfield.  It's amazing to watch, amazing.  And the Clintons -- (laughing) -- the Clintons are just sitting out there, and they're watching all this, and they're yucking it up.  They're having a grand old time.  

What's this going to do with the superdelegates?  Snerdley, will you be patient?  Will you just calm down?  Snerdley is now having a conniption fit, "What's this going to do to me when Hillary wins the nomination?"  If Mrs. Clinton wins the nomination, it isn't going to be my fault.  My objective was not to see that either of these two won specifically.  One of them was going to.  It was to see to it that just this kind of thing happened.  Operation Chaos, a profound success, ladies and gentlemen. 

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We have some Obama sound bites from his press conference going on now.  You look at this guy. I'm looking at this press conference. He looks beaten.  His shoulders are hunched. He looks defensive. He doesn't look authoritative. He started out trying to be authoritative by the way he identified reporters with that JFK version of pointing them out.  But he looks beaten back, on the defensive.  He chose this church for political reasons.  That is what has become obvious.  He chose this church for political reasons.  He's now paying a political price for doing that.  You choose your church, and he chose this one -- and what this is showing is that judgment matters.  I wonder if Michelle (My Belle) feels the same way about Jeremiah Wright.  How can Obama be surprised today?  We need to get some other parishioners out there to say whether or not they're shocked by Wright's recent comments.  

They sat in that church, too.  Wright's only repeating what he said in this church.  Wright has said nothing new.  There's nothing new!  This is the key. There's nothing new that he has said, and all of a sudden Obama has to throw him under the train.  Let's go find some other parishioners; let's find some that agree with Obama.  Wright set this up.  "Well, he's a politician. He has to say what he says."  Twenty years he couldn't see what kind of man Jeremiah Wright is, didn't know he held these views, yet he expects to be president? Does he know what his own wife thinks?  I wonder, does he know what his wife thinks about this?  Because she's out there parroting Wright.  She's out there, in her own way, giving his sermons as political speeches.  Don't become part of the middle class, don't succumb to "middle classness."  She gave a speech Friday night that I've been reading about. Apparently, she was fit-to-be-tied angry.  

She always is angry when she shows up.  But the bottom line, ladies and gentlemen, the bottom line, Reverend Wright in the past three days has said nothing new.  He didn't say anything new on Moyers. He didn't say anything new Monday at the National Press Club.  The Reverend Wright has broken no new ground, and yet Barack Obama now says he is insulted and says that he is upset and that he is outraged and there has been great damage to their relationship; that he thinks Reverend Wright caricatured himself yesterday.  He hasn't caricatured himself!  He is who he is, and he didn't say or do anything new.  My friends, I can't tell you, this is a profundity.  This is why I am repeating it.  He has been saying these things for 20 years, the sermons on video that everybody has seen. He said nothing new in the past three or four days.  And yet Obama now tosses him aside purely for political reasons.  Couple sound bites.  Obama damage control, the first of two that we have here.

OBAMA:  The person I saw yesterday, uh, was not the person that I met 20 years ago.  His comments were not only (pause) divisive and --

RUSH:  Do you see...? Stop this.  Do you see? The person we saw yesterday was mild compared to the person who's been at that pulpit!  This is my point.  There is nothing new.  There's nothing new.  "The person we saw yesterday is not the person I met 20 years ago"? He damn well sure is!  Let me tell you something.  Do you know who his bodyguards were?  Do you know who Wright's bodyguards were at the National Press Club?  Nation of Islam.  Louis Farrakhan's bodyguards provided security for Reverend Wright at the National Press Club.  This guy is Nation of Islam, when you boil it all down.  Play that sound bite again, from the top.

OBAMA:  The person I saw yesterday, uh, was not the person that I met 20 years ago.  His comments were not only (pause) divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate; and I believe that they do not portray, accurately, the perspective of the black church.  They certainly don't portray accurately my values and beliefs.  And if Reverend Wright thinks that that's "political posturing," as he put it, then he doesn't know me very well.  And based on his remarks yesterday, well, I may not know him as well, uh, as I thought, either.

RUSH:  Whoa.  Whoa!  He can't get away with this.  Does not portray the perspective of the black church?  How would Obama know?  This is his church!  How would he know what the black church is?  This is the church he's been going to for 20 years.  Do not accurately portray my values and beliefs?  It took you 20 years and a presidential campaign to come to that conclusion?  This is not messianic.  This is not unique.  This is not new.  This is not a politician who has never trod the political ground of a presidential campaign before in the great country of the United States of America.  This is your average, ordinary, inexperienced run-of-the-mill politician with a sense of entitlement about him; who has been softened up by puff ball coverage from the Drive-By Media, and now is having trouble dealing with the rigors of a presidential campaign.  I knew when Wright said, "Hey, he's just a politician. He's gotta say what he's gotta say. I gotta say what I gotta say. We got different audiences," I knew that would get under Obama's skin, and it did.  "If Reverend Wright thinks that's political posturing on my part, he doesn't know me very well."  I realize some of you people think this is a grand scheme on the part of Wright and Obama, that they've set this up, that Wright knew all along he was going to have to be disowned.  If that's the case, this would have happened the minute those sermons surfaced on video. He wouldn't have gone through this speech in Philadelphia.  No, no, no, folks. This is ineptitude on parade.  Here is another sound bite.

OBAMA:  When he states and then amplifies such ridiculous propositions as the US government somehow being involved in AIDS; uh, when he suggests that Minister Farrakhan somehow represents one of the greatest voices of the twenty -- twentieth and twenty-first century; when he equates the United States' wartime efforts with terrorism, then there are no excuses.  Uh, they offend me. Uh, they rightly offend all Americans, and they should be denounced, and that's what I'm doing very clearly and unequivocally here today.

RUSH:  This is not working.  This is not working.  He's in this guy's church 20 years.  He's heard the guy talk about the United States being responsible for AIDS. He's heard all these things.  He's acting like he just heard these things for the first time, even though he's admitted that he heard these, then he said he hadn't, then he said he had.  Can you say "toast"?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here's one more audio sound bite from Obama this afternoon, another portion of his remarks.

OBAMA:  Upon watching it what became clear to me was that it was more than just him defending himself.  What became clear to me was that he was presenting a worldview that contradicts who I am and what I stand for.  And what I think particularly angered me was his suggestion somehow that my previous denunciation of his remarks were somehow political posturing.

RUSH:  This is unreal.

OBAMA:  Anybody who knows me and anybody who knows what I'm about knows that --

RUSH:  We don't know!  That's the key.

OBAMA:  -- I'm about trying to bridge gaps and that I see the commonality in all people.

RUSH:  We don't know.

OBAMA:  And so when I start hearing comments about conspiracy theories and AIDS and suggestions that somehow minister Farrakhan has been a great voice in the twentieth century --

RUSH:  Lord.

OBAMA:  -- then that goes directly at who I am and what I believe this country needs.

RUSH:  Is this the change we've been waiting for?  Is that Barack Obama's change?  The change is he's the last guy on the planet to figure out Jeremiah Wright?  You know what this is like?  This is like Hillary Clinton calling a press conference, "I've just learned my husband cheats on me."  This is absurd, folks!  Our intelligence is being insulted again.  Imagine Hillary Clinton today with a press conference, "Ladies and gentlemen, I come to you today because I am divorcing my husband, because I just learned that he has been unfaithful to me for over 20 years."  Good Lord, folks, he's talking about Wright at the National Press Club yesterday.  "What became clear to me was that it was more than just him defending himself.  What became clear to me was that he was presenting a worldview that contradicts who I am." You chose the guy.  None of this is unbelievable, Barack.  "What I think particularly angered me was his suggestion somehow that my previous denunciation of his remarks were somehow political posturing.  Anybody who knows me or what I'm about --" we don't know who you are and what you're about, that's what this is all about.  "When I start hearing comments about conspiracy theories and AIDS and suggestions that somehow minister Farrakhan --" He's been asked about Farrakhan traveling to meet Khadafy.  He's been asked about Wright making that trip.  

So we'll watch the Drive-By Media tonight do their best to spin this into an act of courage, something that's worthwhile of the Kennedy School of Government's award for the Profile in Courage.  You know, every year Caroline Kennedy awards a Profile in Courage Award to a great political operative.  The Kennedys have endorsed this guy, right?  So this is going to be spun as an act of political courage today.  Lurking now in the shadows is the Reverend Wright.  (laughing)  Wouldn't it be great if Wright says, "You chose me. You've been to my sermons. You've been in my pulpit for 20 years. I baptized your children."  Barack doesn't have the juice to Fort Marcy Park this guy so he's going to have to put up with him out there and whatever he happens to say, if he says anything.  There's another conspiracy going around, I kid you not, ladies and gentlemen, check the Democrat blogs, another conspiracy theory going around out there.  

New York Daily News columnist, Errol Louis, in his piece today, indicates that the woman who secured and organized the appearance of Reverend Wright, the National Press Club yesterday, is actually a Hillary Clinton operative, Barbara Reynolds.  She used to be on TV all the time.  She's an ordained minister, runs the divinity school at Howard University.  I remember watching her on TV.  She used to be one of these angry -- like Julianne Malveaux-type people.  You know, Julianne Malveaux wishing that Clarence Thomas' wife would feed him a little cholesterol so he'd have a heart attack.  Barbara Reynolds, she was mad out there.  A minister set up Wright.  A Clinton minister set up Obama's minister, exactly right, Errol Louis is saying today that the organizer of Wright's appearance at the National Press Club was set up, and she was sitting right next to him at the dais talking to him.  He was set up by Barbara Reynolds who is a Clinton operative and she's written on her blog some very critical things of Obama and his reaction to his preacher and so forth and to Wright.

So that the conspiracy theory is, who is the most public operative for Mrs. Clinton right now?  It's me, commander-in-chief, US Operation Chaos.  And so the Democrats say, you know, the real reason, real reason this happened, they're saying the real reason that Wright got set up with this invitation, the National Press Club, and Obama ends up getting set up by this, is me, Operation Chaos.  That's some of the wild conspiracy theories that are floating around out there.  All right, again, we have declared an operational pause, pending study.  You gotta have flexibility.  You know, every battle cannot be planned from beginning to end because the minute you meet opposition, the plan changes.  So we have always remained flexible with many, many options at our disposal.  This is one of these that we did not foresee.  In Operation Chaos, we did not foresee coming down the road that Obama would throw Wright off the planet.  The operational pause has been declared while we engage in further strategy sessions to see where we go from here with Operation Chaos.  One thing you can count on is, Operation Chaos will continue.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  Barack Obama has committed another rookie mistake.  He should never have had this press conference between noon and three eastern.  This is something that even the stupidest Democrats have learned! You just don't do this.  So now he's done it.  We have one more sound bite from it.  I want to warn you people again: Operation Chaos with an operational pause. We put it on hold here for just a day.  I want to gauge the Drive-By Media reaction to this tonight because I know exactly what it's going to be, and you'd better be prepared. If you watch it, you're going to be tempted to get sick. They're going to portray this as something exactly the opposite of what it is; that it's courageous, that it was brilliant, that it's an act of courage that we have not seen since the sixties in American politics.  You watch.  I've already seen Chris Matthews set it up.  I knew it was going to happen before he did it, but he followed through.  Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, had the same take -- and the others will be in on it.  That's why Obama should not have done this between noon and three.  Huge rookie mistake.  Here's the final bite.

OBAMA:  He (pause) provided valuable contributions to my family, but at a certain point, if what somebody says contradicts what you believe so fundamentally --

RUSH:  At a certain point?

OBAMA:  -- and then he questions whether or not you believe it, in front of the National Press Club --

RUSH:  Come on, baby.

OBAMA:  -- then that's enough.  That's a -- a show of disrespect to me.  It is also, I think, an insult to what we've been trying to do in this campaign.  She was (pause) similarly angered.

RUSH:  He's talking about Michelle (My Belle) Obama there, being similarly angered.  She was probably angry this is all happening, that Wright's been uncovered.  She's a disciple!  Look, we can cut to the chase on this.  There's no way -- absolutely no way -- that Barack Obama learned anything new about Reverend Jeremiah Wright by virtue of what he said at the National Press Club yesterday.  "He provided valuable contributions to my family"? What?  What were his valuable contributions, Senator Obama?  Because he hasn't said anything new since we first heard of this guy.  He hasn't said a thing new.  He is who he is.  If we want to talk about genuine on the Democrat side, there's one guy who is genuine in all this and it's Reverend Wright.  Reverend Wright at least has the courage to open himself up and say, "Here's who I am, and I hate you!  But this is who I am. I hate you, and I hate your country, and I hate riiiich whiiiite peeeeople!  America's chickennnnnnns have come home to roost."

 At least he's got the guts to tell us what he is, what he thinks, and who he is -- and there's nothing new here.  I cannot emphasize this enough.  So all these things he said at the Press Club yesterday, Obama, the light just went off?  Ha! Fat chance.  Again, I ask you to think of this: Imagine if a press conference was called later this afternoon, Mrs. Clinton walks out to the microphone and says that she's divorcing her husband; that she has filed papers because she just learned that he represents things that she can't stomach. He represents ideas and beliefs that she had no idea that he held, and he has been having affairs the whole time they've been married.  She just found out about it, and she is going to get out of the marriage.  "It has no place in this campaign.  He has no right to be dominating this campaign.  It's my campaign."  This is what Obama has said about Jeremiah Wright. (sigh) 

END TRANSCRIPT

Read the Background Material...

• AP: Obama Says He's Outraged by Former Pastor's Comments
• New York Times: Obama Adds to Distance from Pastor and Opinions
• FOX: Wright: 'I Offered Words of Hope'
• Real Clear Politics: Obama's 'Change' Not What US Needs - Thomas Sowell
• National Review: The Senator and the Disastrous Rev. Wright
• The Rev. Wright Just Can't Help Himself - David Limbaugh
• NewsBusters: Obama Camp Rips Wright
• New York Times: The Pastor Casts a Shadow - Bob Herbert
• HotAir: The Wright Stuff: Farrakhan 'One of the Most Important Voices of the Last Century'