•Obama denies knowledge of pastor's statements but...
•NewsMax reporter confirms Obama was in attendance
•Collapse of Bear Stearns; Greenspan says "worst since WWII"
•Southern Poverty attacks border security activists

03.17.08 Briefing • Steve Elliott, Grassfire.org • Subscribe here • RSS

Report: Obama Was In Attendance For Pastor's Racially Charged Sermon

Barack Obama responded Friday to the reports (here and elsewhere) regarding his pastor's anti-American, racially divisive and profane statement from the pulpit by saying he wasn't very familiar with those statements:

"I wasn't in church during the time that these statements were made. I did not hear such incendiary language myself, personally. Either in conversations with him or when I was in the pew, he always preached the social gospel. ... If I had heard them repeated, I would have quit. ... If I thought that was the repeated tenor of the church, then I wouldn’t feel comfortable there."

Obama even went on Foxnews and did an interview with Major Garrett. Obama, in my opinion, was terrible and Garrett was on his game. You can read and view the interview here. Fox's Garrett pinned Obama down and left little credibilty in Obama's denials. Obama acknowledged that he frequently donated to the church, was a regular attendee and that Wright married Barack and Michelle and baptized Obama's children (Wright also blessed his house). Obama's main defense is that Wright is retiring and it's no longer an issue. And he was careful to leave himself some "wiggle room" on what he actually knew about Wright's beliefs:

Garrett: So quick yes or no, if you had heard [the outrageous statements] in person you would have quit [the church].
Obama : If I had heard them repeated, I would've quit.

NewsMax Reporter Says "Obama Was There"
Note the use of the word "repeated," because we already have NewsMax reporting that one if its freelance writers was in attendance at the church last July with Obama when Pastor Wright continued his anti-American, racial diatribe. Obama didn't raise an objection:
In his sermon that day, Wright tore into America, referring to the “United States of White America” and lacing his sermon with expletives as Obama listened. Hearing Wright’s attacks on his own country, Obama had the opportunity to walk out, but [NewsMax's reporter] said the senator sat in his pew and nodded in agreement.

More on Barack and the pastor from NewsMax archives here -- a story from last summer. You can also read a year-old Rolling Stone article originally entitled "The Racial Roots of Barack Obama" (renamed since) that details much of Wright's controversial style. ABC news' Jake Tapper questions Obama's "I wasn't there" defense. Tapper cites a New York Times article from March 2007 in which the Obama campaign disinvited Wright from giving an invocation because of the campaign's concerns about Wright's statements. The NYT quotes Wright as saying that Obama personally explained the disinvite this way: “You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we’ve decided is that it’s best for you not to be out there in public.”

This article in National Review calls this "the worst crisis the Obama campaign has faced." More in NR here. Bill Kristol in NYTimes. WND on how Obama's church is suddenly cleaning up its website.

The sale of Bear Stearns and Sunday night's move by the Fed to offer loans to other securities dealers mark the latest historic turns in what has become the most pervasive financial crisis in a generation. The issue is no longer whether it will yield a recession -- that seems almost certain -- but whether the concerted efforts of Wall Street and Washington can head off a recession much deeper and more prolonged than the past two, relatively mild ones.

Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan is saying that "(t)he current financial crisis in the US is likely to be judged in retrospect as the most wrenching since the end of the second world war. It will end eventually when home prices stabilize and with them the value of equity in homes supporting troubled mortgage securities."

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