GINA COBB

"Rookie Mistakes Again: Obama Owns Appeasement"

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air.

Well Howdy Back Fred, You'se Alla's Bin The Man!

By DemocracyRules

"2008 is hardly our first rodeo"
Uhh-huh, y'all got that right, and howdy back here, y'all William Faulkner uh the Right! You kin 'spect me to be readin' right along with your writin', all the way along and all the way home!  That's some sweet poetry, that is...

McCain's Carefully Considered Stance on Global Warming

The Ryskind Sketchbook

Media Begin Mocking Hillary; Still Covering for Obama

The media left really, really, wants Hillary Clinton's campaign to be over, and this piece by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post is a good illustration of that.  It's also rather amusing in its own right:

Customer: "Look, matey, I know a dead parrot when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now."

Pet-shop owner: "No, no he's not dead, he's -- he's resting! Remarkable bird, the Norwegian blue, isn't it, aye? Beautiful plumage!"

-- From "Monty Python's Flying Circus"

11:45 a.m., Melrose Hotel, Foggy Bottom: It's Day 7 of the Clinton Campaign Death Watch -- a full week since the official arbiter of the Democratic primary, Tim Russert, declared the campaign over and Barack Obama the nominee. Hillary Clinton's advisers continue to insist that the candidate's prospects are very much alive, but the press isn't buying it. Exhibit A: There are two press buses waiting at the hotel here for Clinton's trip to her victory rally in West Virginia, but the entire press contingent doesn't quite fill one. It isn't until the entourage arrives at Dulles Airport that Clinton aides learn that the second bus is still idling, empty, at the hotel.

If there is importance in the results of the primary in West Virginia, the press corps isn't letting on. During the security sweep at Dulles, some play Hacky Sack with a cigarette carton. Awaiting the candidate on the tarmac, two guys from CNN toss a football. Aboard the plane, one member of the press corps entertains his colleagues by flopping down the aisle on his belly, like a fish.

But Clinton, wearing a salmon-colored jacket and dark sunglasses, is all smiles as she boards the jet. She hugs and kisses her campaign chairman, Terry McAuliffe. Still grinning, she helps herself to a cracker with spread from the snack tray as the plane taxis to the runway. And why shouldn't she be happy? Within minutes, Clinton has crossed the Blue Ridge and is over the green hills of West Virginia, home of what she calls the "hardworking Americans, white Americans." This is Clinton Country.

Customer: "That parrot is definitely deceased, and when I purchased it not half an hour ago, you assured me that its total lack of movement was due to it being tired and shagged out following a prolonged squawk."

Pet-shop owner: "Well, he's, he's, ah, probably pining for the fiords."

2:57 p.m., Yeager Airport, Charleston, W.Va.: A steep descent brings Clinton's plane to Charleston's hilltop airport. After an appropriate wait, she steps from the plane and pretends to wave to a crowd of supporters; in fact, she is waving to 10 photographers underneath the airplane's wing. She pretends to spot an old friend in the crowd, points and gives another wave; in fact, she is waving at an aide she had been talking with on the plane minutes earlier.

OK, so nobody likes Clinton anymore.  Her campaign is dead in the water.  Got it.

But then what should I make of this picture from an Obama campaign appearance earlier this year?

Gee, that's a lot of empty seats for The Change We've Been Waiting For.

It's the sort of embarrassing photo that rarely reaches publication thanks to tacit collaboration between Democratic Party candidates and the press.

The press have now withdrawn their cooperation from Hillary Rodham Clinton, and every empty hall in her campaign will be fair game until she finally surrenders and leaves the race.

Go ahead, media, pile on.  In another week or two, John McCain will begin receiving the same treatment, presumably continuing on a daily basis until November. 

Go ahead -- expose Hillary Clinton's campaign for the stage-managed fraud that it is.

Once in a while, though, I'd like to read about the stage managing of Barack Obama's campaign.  I'd like to see coverage that acknowleges that the leading candidate also has feet of clay. 

Wouldn't that be a refreshing change -- coverage that exposes the preening and exaggeration of all the candidates?  Is that too much to ask?  Let political news, for once, be real.

Obama Campaign Encounters Racism -- and Valid Questions About Ties to Radical Muslims

There is some serious racism left in this world, and the Washington Post has pointed out that Obama's campaign has encountered some of it.

As, I'm sure, Hillary Clinton's campaign has encountered sexism, and John McCain's campaign has encountered the triple challenge of trying to overcome ageism, anti-militarism and conservatism.

Without detracting from the truth that there are indeed a few racists left in this country (not all of them white -- racism can be found in all racial groups), may I respectfully suggest that Obama's campaign refuse to cooperate with further stories like the Washington Post piece, at least prior to the election.  Obama can try to be the standard-bearer of Hope and Change (as long as he stays away from associates whose fervent wish is to "God d*** America"), or he can wrap himself in the Mantle of Victimhood -- but trying to do both at the same time makes for a very confusing image.

Americans want and need a strong president, and strength is incompatible with victimhood.  If Obama and his supporters can't handle a few pockets of lingering racism in America, wait 'til they see what Iran, Al Qaeda and the worldwide Islamic jihad are dishing out.

And spare me this kind of sniveling, dishonest condescension from the Washington Post:

In a letter to the editor published in a local paper, Tunkhannock Borough Mayor Norm Ball explained his support of Hillary Clinton this way: "Barack Hussein Obama and all of his talk will do nothing for our country. There is so much that people don't know about his upbringing in the Muslim world. His stepfather was a radical Muslim and the ranting of his minister against the white America, you can't convince me that some of that didn't rub off on him.

"No, I want a president that will salute our flag, and put their hand on the Bible when they take the oath of office."

Obama's campaign workers have grown wearily accustomed to the lies about the candidate's supposed radical Muslim ties and lack of patriotism.

Here's a clue for the Washington Post:  It is not a "lie" that Obama has radical Muslim ties.  His father was a radical, a socialist, and a supporter of communists if not a communist himself.  Obama's closest spritual adviser Rev. Jeremiah Wright (until a month or so ago when he became a glaring poltiical liability) is both a former Muslim (we hope -- he still uses bodyguards from the Nation of Islam) and an extreme anti-American radical.  As we just discussed yesterday, Obama was himself a Muslim as defined by Muslims:

As the son of the Muslim father, Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood. It makes no difference that, as Obama has written, his father said he renounced his religion.

Likewise, under Muslim law based on the Koran his mother's Christian background is irrelevant.

Of course, as most Americans understand it, Obama is not a Muslim. He chose to become a Christian, and indeed has written convincingly to explain how he arrived at his choice and how important his Christian faith is to him.

His conversion, however, was a crime in Muslim eyes; it is "irtidad" or "ridda," usually translated from the Arabic as "apostasy," but with connotations of rebellion and treason.

Thus, Obama's "radical Muslim ties" are fact, not myth, and certainly not racist myth.  His ties both to radicals and to Muslims are strong and deep. 

For its blatant and slanderous lie against those who note Obama's radical Muslim ties, the entire Washington Post article forfeits its credibility.

Update:  Just in time to further prove my point (via Uncorrelated)-- though using this example is like using a cannon to shoot a mosquito -- Palestinians in Gaza are phonebanking for Obama.  Although I have to question the utility of Arabs lobbying for Obama in (presumably) broken English, it does tend to underscore the point that -- why yes! -- Obama does have "radical Muslim ties."  All over the place.

Is Michelle Obama Dumb?

By DemocracyRules

h/t AmericanDigest

I know, it is not politically correct to suggest that a black person might be dumb.  But dumbness is just as prevalent among blacks as it is among whites.

About college entrance exams, Michelle said, "You cannot measure the success of a child by a single test. And if that were the case, I wouldn’t be here, because I was not a good test taker. How many kids do you know who are like me?"

Michelle should absolutely not go there.  First, it is very common in industrialized countries to use aptitude testing to rank students.  The U.S. is not at all unique this way, and Michelle is displaying her ignorance to suggest otherwise.  She is effectively making a plea to change the industrialized world, which is bit quixotic.  Second, she got into university via affirmative action, and she did not have to perform as well as whites to get in.

Michelle Obama has made so many strange, dark and disturbing statements lately that someone has set up MichelleObamaSuicideWatch .

Barack Obama Loves This Great Big Country of Ours

All 57 states.

Links to reaction at Instapundit.

Funniest remark so far:  "Somebody should ask him to name all 114 US Senators."

Cross-posted at Right Wing News

It's Up To the Superdelegates

There is growing pressure to crown Obama the Democratic Party presidential nominee and to get Hillary Clinton to drop out of the race, but as a mathematical reality neither Obama nor Clinton can secure enough delegates to win the nomnation outright.  That means the choice of Democratic Party presidential nominee is in the hands of the superdelegates now.

WASHINGTON - Sen. Barack Obama climbed within 200 delegates of clinching the Democratic presidential nomination based on a split decision in Tuesday's primaries.

Obama won most of the delegates at stake in the two contests, picking up at least 94 delegates in the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, according to an analysis of election returns by The Associated Press. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton won at least 79 delegates, with 14 still to be awarded.

Twelve of the outstanding delegates were from North Carolina and two were from Indiana.

In the overall race for the nomination, Obama led with 1,840.5 delegates, including separately chosen party and elected officials known as superdelegates. Clinton had 1,688.

That leaves Obama just 184.5 delegates shy of the 2,025 needed to secure the Democratic nomination.

There are 217 delegates at stake in the final six contests: West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon, Puerto Rico, Montana and South Dakota. Obama, however, won't win enough of those delegates to claim the nomination because of the proportional method used by the Democrats to award them.

That leaves the nomination in the hands of about 270 superdelegates who have yet to be claimed. Superdelegates are the party and elected officials who will automatically attend the national convention and can support whomever they choose, regardless of what happens in the primaries and caucuses.

Nearly 800 superdelegates will attend the national convention. About 220 remain undecided and about 50 others will be named at state party conventions and meetings throughout the spring.

Obama argues that superdelegates should support the candidate who wins the most pledged delegates. Clinton says superdelegates should exercise independent judgment.

Obama is on pace to reach a majority of the pledged delegates won in primaries and caucuses in two weeks, when Kentucky and Oregon vote. Obama has a 167-delegate lead among pledged delegates.

Clinton leads in superdelegate endorsements, 270.5 to 256, though Obama has been chipping away at her lead since the Super Tuesday contests on Feb. 5. Both candidates picked up a superdelegate endorsement Tuesday.

Why Did Hillary Clinton Cancel All Public Appearances for Today?

Is it because she's dropping out of the race, or is it just that she doesn't want to have to publicly defend staying in the race after Obama's win in North Carolina?

Tim Russert says it's over.  Barack Obama is the nominee.

However, Clinton has eked out a "razor-thin" victory in Indiana.

Update 1:  Lucianne puts it this way today:  Hillary mortally wounded. How long before she actually falls down?

Update 2:  Check on the guy on the left.  He seems delighted by Hillary's win in Indiana, doesn't he?  (And isn't it beautiful to see the love between the Clintons continue to deepen and grow as time goes by?)

Hillary's Coup de Grace?

From Ben Smith's Politico:

A colleague emails:

Don't know if you watched the Derby, but the horse Hillary wanted came in second, collapsed and was killed on the spot.

It's true.  Hillary was rooting for the filly, no doubt on grounds of gender:

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Big Brown backed up his trainer's boasts with an explosive finishing kick and won the Kentucky Derby on Saturday, a commanding victory turned somber by the fatal breakdown of the filly Eight Belles on horse racing's biggest day.

The cheers for the winner's 4 3/4-length victory were cut short when Eight Belles, the runner-up, collapsed while galloping out near the second turn. She broke her two front ankles and was euthanized on the track minutes later.

"When we passed the wire I stood up. She started galloping funny. I tried to pull her up. That's when she went down," said her distraught jockey, Gabriel Saez.

Eight Belles was attempting to become the fourth filly to win the Derby.

The backstory:

INDIANAPOLIS -- Hillary Clinton’s pick to win the Kentucky Derby this year came in second, but was later euthanized on the track. The tragic moment at Churchill Downs cast an eerie spell over the campaign and the candidate who recently compared herself and her candidacy to the only female horse running in the race, Eight Belles.

At a campaign in event recently in Jeffersonville, just north of Louisville, Kentucky, Clinton encouraged her supporters to put their money on the 20-1 long shot. “I hope that everybody will go to the derby on Saturday and place just a little money on the filly for me,” she said. “I won’t be able to be there this year, my daughter is going to be there and so she has strict instructions to bet on Eight Belles.”

Earlier that day Clinton visited her Kentucky headquarters where a sign on the wall said “Bet on the filly.” A filly is a young female horse, and no doubt Clinton saw a comparison to the horses’ race and her own political race.

OK, Hillary, you've got your comparison.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News

Was Obama Raised Muslim?

Consider the evidence:

As Barack Obama's candidacy comes under increasing scrutiny, his account of his religious upbringing deserves careful attention for what it tells us about the candidate's integrity.

Obama asserted in December, "I've always been a Christian," and he has adamantly denied ever having been a Muslim. "The only connection I've had to Islam is that my grandfather on my father's side came from that country [Kenya]. But I've never practiced Islam."

In February, he claimed, "I have never been a Muslim.... other than my name and the fact that I lived in a populous Muslim country for four years when I was a child [Indonesia, 1967-71] I have very little connection to the Islamic religion."

"Always" and "never" leave little room for equivocation. But many biographical facts, culled mainly from the American press, suggest that, when growing up, the Democratic candidate for president both saw himself and was seen as a Muslim.

• Obama's Kenyan birth father: In Islam, religion passes from the father to the child. Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. (1936-1982) was a Muslim who named his boy Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.

• Obama's Indonesian family: His stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, was also a Muslim. In fact, as Obama's half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng explained to Jodi Kantor of The New York Times: "My whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim." An Indonesian publication, The Banjarmasin Post, reports a former classmate, Rony Amir, recalling that "All the relatives of Barry's father were very devout Muslims."

• Obama's Catholic school in Jakarta: Nedra Pickler of the Associated Press reports that "documents showed he enrolled as a Muslim" while at a Catholic school during first through third grades. Kim Barker of The Chicago Tribune confirms that Obama was "listed as a Muslim on the registration form for the Catholic school."

• The public school: Paul Watson of The Los Angeles Times learned from Indonesians familiar with Obama when he lived in Jakarta that he "was registered by his family as a Muslim at both schools he attended." Haroon Siddiqui of The Toronto Star visited the Jakarta public school Obama attended and found that "Three of his teachers have said he was enrolled as a Muslim." Although Siddiqui cautions that "With the school records missing, eaten by bugs, one has to rely on people's shifting memories," he cites only one retired teacher, Tine Hahiyari, retracting her earlier certainty about Obama's being registered as a Muslim.

• Barack Obama's public school in Jakarta, Koran class: In his autobiography, Dreams of My Father, Obama relates how he got into trouble for making faces during Koran studies. Indeed, Obama still retains knowledge from that class: Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times reports that Obama "recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them [to Kristof] with a first-rate accent."

• Mosque attendance: Obama's half-sister recalled that the family attended the mosque "for big communal events." Watson learned from childhood friends that "Obama sometimes went to Friday prayers at the local mosque." Barker found that "Obama occasionally followed his stepfather to the mosque for Friday prayers." One Indonesia friend, Zulfin Adi, states that Obama "was Muslim. He went to the mosque. I remember him wearing a sarong" (a garment associated with Muslims).

• Piety: Obama himself says that while living in Indonesia, a Muslim country, he "didn't practice [Islam]." Indonesians differ in their memories of him. One, Rony Amir, describes Obama as "previously quite religious in Islam."

Assuming that these facts are correct, does it matter?

In this age of Islamic terror, of course it does.  It bears on Obama's perspective, the values that were inculcated in him in his early life, and much more.  Given that Obama's 20-year spiritual advisor Rev. Jeremiah Wright seems still to remain rather enmeshed with the Nation of Islam (which provided bodyguards for his appearance at the National Press Club this week), it does matter.

Let Obama Sweep Wright Under the Rug and Move On? Not So Fast

Recommended from Ace of Spades:  What the Media (The People I Trust To Make Decisions) Decided for Me about Wright

1. Wright's anti-semitic, anti-American, hardcore Marxist radical hatred was entirely occluded from Obama, the world, and most especially the NYT until yesterday. It came as a complete shock to one and all, and no one should hold it against Obama that he cultivated a mutually advantageous political partnership with a Nazi for 20 years. Now he's "repudiated" the Nazi, and we all know that you can consort with Nazis for almost all of your adult life and then simply "repudiate" them at a press availability and the issue goes away entirely.

2. Obama's 20 year political partnership with Wright may raise questions about his judgment, but it is wrongful for his political opponents to raise such questions in campaign ads. Some questions, it seems, are properly raised, but silently, in deep personal meditation, perhaps on an alpine hill while reading Rilke. Certainly we do not need to audibly ask questions about a presidential candidate. That's just hurtful and corrosive of our political process, which relies, at its core, of utter trust in our political leaders without question.

3. Not only does Obama's very late-inning "disowning" of Wright completely insulate him from questions about their 20 year history together, it actually transforms Obama into an anti-Wright, the good, cleanshaven mirror-universe good version of the goateed evil version Wright. Whether or not a transporter malfunction is partly responsible for this is anyone's guess.

4. Obama gets to decide when the Wright issue is not legitimate. He mentioned it being legitimate the other day, now he rules it out as legitimate, stating he didn't want the press to associate him with Wright anymore. As will soon be apparent, Obama gets to decide on behalf our our independent media when an issue is and is not worthy of public discussion.

Read the rest here.

Too Funny: Obama's Flying Pig

From Michelle Malkin:  The Great Obama Airdrop Caper!

If the giant floating pig symbolizes Obama's campaign, what does it symbolize when the pig drifts away and is found in pieces scattered across several driveways and backyards?

Do Democrats Really Want to Be the Party of Voter Fraud?

The requirement to have some form of photo identification is so basic to modern lif that one must wonder about the motivations of Democrats who oppose voter identification laws -- even laws like Indiana's that provide for free photo I.D. as well as provisional ballots in case someone forgets to bring their photo I.D. to the polls.

Monday's 6-3 Supreme Court decision upholding Indiana's voter-identification law has unhinged Democrats and their allies on the political left. Within hours of the ruling, the ACLU was wringing its hands about the judgment of the court that requires someone to produce photo identification in order to vote was not unconstitutional. Sen. Charles Schumer, New York Democrat, complained that it was "a body blow to what America stands for — equal access to the polls." But a careful reading of the opinions of the six justices who voted to uphold the Indiana law shows this assertion to be nonsense.

The judgment of the court — that requiring someone to produce photo identification in order to vote is not unconstitutional — was announced by Justice John Paul Stevens, one of its most liberal members. Justice Stevens wrote an opinion, in which Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy concurred, that eviscerates the arguments made against Indiana's reasonable efforts to combat vote fraud. Although Indiana has not experienced a problem with in-person voter impersonation at polling places, there have been huge problems with such fraud in other states. Indiana has a legitimate interest in purging what has become "an unusually inflated list of registered voters," who have reportedly included "the names of thousands of persons who had either moved, died or were not eligible to vote because they had been convicted of felonies."

Demands for photo identification are routine in American life today.  You need photo I.D. to buy cigarettes or alcohol, to board a plane, to rent a jet ski, or to cash a check.  Is casting a ballot less important or solemn than any of these acts? 

If you value the right to vote; if you cherish democracy itself; then preserving the integrity of elections is paramount.  It's obvious that allowing people to cast ballots with no proof of their identity is an invitation to fraud.

Do Democrats really want to be the party of voter fraud?  Is that the legacy that the left wants to leave to American history? 

Allow room for voter fraud, and to that degree our nation is a democracy no more.

Obama: Hey, Get This Wright Anchor Off My Neck!

Let the serious, serious distancing begin:

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Tuesday he was outraged by the latest divisive comments from his former pastor and rejected the notion that he secretly agrees with him.

Obama is seeking to tamp down the growing fury over Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his incendiary remarks that threaten to undermine his campaign at a tough time. The Illinois senator is coming off a loss in Pennsylvania to rival Hillary Rodham Clinton and trying to win over white working-class voters in Indiana and North Carolina in next Tuesday's primaries.

"I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened by the spectacle that we saw yesterday," Obama told reporters at a news conference.

After weeks of staying out of the public eye while critics lambasted his sermons, Wright made three public appearances in four days to defend himself. The former pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago has been combative, providing colorful commentary and feeding the story Obama had hoped was dying down.

On Monday, Wright criticized the U.S. government as imperialist and stood by his suggestion that the United States invented the HIV virus as a means of genocide against minorities. "Based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything," he said.

And perhaps even worse for Obama, Wright suggested that the church congregant secretly concurs.

"If Senator Obama did not say what he said, he would never get elected," Wright said. "Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls."

Obama stated flatly that he doesn't share the views of the man who officiated at his wedding, baptized his two daughters and been his pastor for 20 years. The title of Obama's second book, "The Audacity of Hope," came from a Wright sermon.

"What became clear to me is that he was presenting a world view that contradicts who I am and what I stand for," Obama said. "And 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 and anybody who knows what I'm about knows that I am about trying to bridge gaps and I see the commonality in all people."

In a highly publicized speech last month, Obama sharply condemned Wright's remarks. But he did not leave the church or repudiate the minister himself, who he said was like a family member.

On Tuesday, Obama sought to distance himself further from Wright.

"I have been a member of Trinity United Church of Christ since 1992, and have known Reverand Wright for 20 years," Obama said. "The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago."

. . . .  Wright had asserted that criticism of his fiery sermons was an attack on the black church. Obama rejected that notion.

Obama said his earlier mild reaction came because he gave him the benefit of the doubt, but that evaporated when he saw Wright's speech. Wright's comments may well have severed the relationship.

"He has done great damage, I do not see that relationship being the same," said Obama.

"What became clear to me was that he was presenting a world view that contradicts what I am and what I stand for," Obama said.

Wright recently retired from the church. He became an issue in Obama's presidential bid when videos circulated of Wright condemning the U.S. government for allegedly racist and genocidal acts. In the videos, some several years old, Wright called on God to "damn America." He also said the government created the AIDS virus to destroy "people of color."

. . . .  "I gave him the benefit of the doubt in my speech in Philadelphia explaining that he's done enormous good. ... But when he states and then amplifies such ridiculous propositions as the U.S. government somehow being involved in AIDS. ... There are no excuses. They offended me. They rightly offend all Americans and they should be denounced."

So Mr. Obama, does this mean you're not going to be taking any more spiritual advice from the Reverend Wright?

The ball's back in your court, Rev.  Perhaps you'd like to reiterate your remarks about how Barack Obama will say anything to get elected?

Rev. Wright: I've Got Your Context Right Here

As Jonah Goldberg and others point out today, Barack Obama's "spiritual advisor" Jeremiah Wright has obliterated any claim that his previous anti-American statements were "taken out of context:"

After Barack Obama gave his big race speech in mid-March, many critics noted that the Illinois senator had thrown his own grandmother under the bus to defend his controversial pastor. Well, Wright proved over the last few days that he would not be outdone. He not only threw Obama under the bus, he chucked much of the liberal and mainstream media under there with him. If this keeps up, to paraphrase Roy Scheider in "Jaws," he's gonna need a bigger bus.

For six weeks, Obama's biggest supporters have diligently argued that to so much as mention Wright is in effect racist. When Hillary Rodham Clinton said that Wright wouldn't have been her pastor, Andrew Sullivan gasped on his Atlantic blog that this was "a new low" in the election. When Lanny J. Davis, Clinton's consummate spinner, defended her on CNN by describing what Wright actually said, CNN's Anderson Cooper lambasted Davis for daring to even repeat Wright's comments. Newsweek's Joe Klein chimed in, "You're spreading the poison right now."

Obama and his defenders have repeatedly insisted that the bits from Wright's sermons that got wide circulation last month had been taken "out of context." His infamous sound bites were grounded in concrete theological or factual foundations, they claim. He was quoting other people. He's done good things. Nothing to see here, folks.

And so God bless Wright because he's left all of these folks holding a giant, steaming bag of ... well, let's just call it a bag of "context."

Let's start with the news out of his speeches Sunday and Monday: Wright, Obama's mentor and former pastor, is worse than we thought. He's a bigot, at least by the standards usually reserved for white people such as former Harvard President Lawrence Summers or "The Bell Curve" author Charles Murray.

On Sunday in Detroit, he explained to 10,000 people at the Fight for Freedom Fund dinner of the NAACP -- an organization adept at taking offense at far less racist comments from nonblacks -- that whites have an inherent "left-brain cognitive, object-oriented learning style. Logical and analytical," while blacks "learn not from an object but from a subject. They are right-brain, subject-oriented in their learning style. That means creative and intuitive. The two worlds have different ways of learning."

Blacks even have better rhythm, Wright explained.

CNN carried the speech live, and news anchor Soledad O'Brien reported from the scene that it was "a home run."

Then, Monday morning at the National Press Club, Wright attempted to clear the air about all of the supposedly deceptive sound bites he's been reduced to.

So, does he stand by his "God damn America" statement?

Well, yeah. He explained that until American leaders apologize to Japan for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as to black Americans for slavery and racism, we will remain a damnable nation.

What about that bit about America's chickens coming home to roost on 9/11? Yep, we heard him right. "You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it not to come back on you; those are biblical principles," he explained.

Asked whether he stood by his assertion that the U.S. government created HIV as part of a genocidal program to wipe out the black race, Wright mostly dodged but ultimately offered this nondenial denial: "I believe our government is capable of doing anything." He also offered a zesty defense of Louis Farrakhan -- "one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st century" -- and dismissed criticism of Farrakhan as an anti-Semite.

To cap it off, Wright threw Obama under the bus. First, the pastor explained, Obama himself had taken Wright out of context. Moreover, Obama neither denounced nor distanced himself from Wright. And, besides, anything that Obama says on such matters is just stuff "politicians say." They "do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls." So much for Obama's new politics.

Rich Lowry agrees:

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright has taken Barack Obama’s critically acclaimed race speech in Philadelphia, ripped it into bits, and tossed it in the air to serve as confetti for his parade through the media.

In that speech, Obama said Wright had been taken out of context, a defense the pastor has made himself. If only we knew the true Wright, Obama complained, instead of just “the snippets of those sermons that have run on an endless loop on the television and YouTube.” In his interview with Bill Moyers on PBS, Wright said the playing of his sound bites was “unfair,” “unjust” and “untrue.”

Then cometh the good reverend to step all over the out-of-context defense in a speech at the National Press Club. He defended his “chickens come home to roost” statement about 9/11 in exactly the same terms as in his original sermon: “You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you.” He stood by his damnation of America and his contention that the U.S. government had created AIDS: “I believe our government is capable of doing anything.”

For good measure, he dishonestly denied Louis Farrakhan’s infamous denunciation of Judaism as a “gutter religion” and called him “one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st century.” The more Wright talked, the more he sounded like a Christian Farrakhan.

By the way. that raises another question in my mind.  Why was Jeremiah Wright, a Christian minister, using bodyguards from the Nation of Islam at the National Press Club?

Rev. Wright is described as a "former" Muslim.  Is he really?  What is he doing with Muslim bodyguards?  Are there no Christians willing to guard the Rev. Wright, assuming that he needs guarding?  Can you picture the Pope being surrounded by Muslim bodyguards?  Is Rev. Wright really a former Muslim, or is he a Christian in Name Only? 

Wright volunteered at the National Press Club that he -- or was it Obama? -- won't tolerate questions about his momma's religious tradition or his daddy's religious tradition, but will he answer questions about his own religious tradition, or where he stands today?

I haven't listened to Wright's sermons, so let's assume for sake of discussion that, aside from the parts we've heard, they are all sweetness and light, 100% Chrisian and biblically based.  Even in that case, Wright is at best religiously bipolar.  His pronouncements are often difficult to distinguish from those of the angry Muslim Louis Farrakhan. 

And this is Barack Obama's spiritual mentor -- the sort of man that Obama might turn to at moments of personal or national crisis in the White House.  Could he have picked a worse one?