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OVER THE WEEKEND...
A weekend news roundup for TAPPED readers.
- Pastor Jeremiah Wright has terminated his involvement with the Barack Obama campaign. Obama himself writes a long explanation at the Huffington Post, and Obama's church weighs in.
- Obama gains 10 delegates ... in Iowa.
- John McCain raises $4-5 million at various fundraisers over the weekend, some of it from backers overseas. Also, during an unannounced visit to Baghdad, McCain described the marketplace where he took a casual stroll last year as "unsafe" for Americans.
- John F. Burns looks back on five years of covering the Iraq war while the Times reports on where the oil profits that were supposed to finance the war effort have gone.
- Europe passes the United States as the world's largest economy, and JPMorgan Chase purchases Bear Stearns for $250 million.
- China cracks down on Tibet, but due to a virtual media blackout, the details aren't quite clear.
- The Washington Post reports on Republican malaise, Democrats tackle their own election-year problems.
--Mori Dinauer
COMMENTS (4)
Obama can spin his relationship with Wright all he likes. The bottom line is his judgment-- Obama-Wright, Obama-Rezko--which looks poorer by the day.
Obama had a 17 year friendship with Rezko but never saw any red flags that Rezko might not be a good person to associate with too closely if you have higher political aspirations.
Wright has been Obama's pastor of 20 years, and yet Obama now says he had no idea about the inflammatory nature of Wright's sermons and he never attended any. How do you belong to a church and not at least hear about stuff like this?
Obama is 46 and here are 2 nearly 20-year relationships in which he now says he was clueless about things that should have been more obvious to him. Yet he continues to sell his judgment as a positive quality.
It's not just a matter of judgment, but arrogance. He knew Rezko would be a problem before he announced his presidential run. He knew Wright would be a problem, too, but just swept that under the rug. Two cases in which Obama took more than a year to address publicly.
Will a President Obama put loyalty to his friends before the country's interests? Will a President Obama exercise good judgment about his choices for advisers and Cabinet members? Seems to me we've already had 8 years of a president who put personal loyalty above all else. Why would we want that again?
Obama's track record with Rezko and Wright, particularly his insistence he saw no red flags, doesn't give me hope.
Posted by: corinne | March 17, 2008 9:44 AM
"Wright has been Obama's pastor of 20 years, and yet Obama now says he had no idea about the inflammatory nature of Wright's sermons and he never attended any. How do you belong to a church and not at least hear about stuff like this?"
Corrinne, don't be so pretend-naive. We all know that all black people know other black people who express themselves that way, out of not-unjustified anger, whether they themselves talk that way or not.
Grow up. You're making Hillary's Brownies look ridiculous again. How can such clueless, stupid people be put in charge of the country?
If you had the power to stick your little jackboots down on my neck all the time, I'd have something to say about it, too.
Posted by: Anonymous | March 17, 2008 10:06 AM
"Europe passes the United States as the world's largest economy"
Sigh...
How many times do we have to see this equation of the European Union - or, as in this case, the Euro zone, which is an even smaller subset - with "Europe"? Get your facts and terminology straight, please - Europe includes countries like Norway and Switzerland that are not part of the European union, and the European union includes countries like Denmark and the UK, which are not part of the Euro zone.
Posted by: Beth | March 17, 2008 10:37 AM
John McCain raises $4-5 million...
For YEARS, we have been deluged with calls to lower the amount of money in politics from the Democrats and the left in particular.
Now, we see the Democrats are raising and spending record amounts.
Posted by: El Viajero | March 17, 2008 10:49 AM