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squash
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I happened to find a photo of the last Whitey Expo. Looks like fun.
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Wed May 21, 2008 4:06 pm |
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twotap
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Yup thats them whiteys alright.  |
_________________
"If you like your current healthcare you can keep it, Period"!!
Barack Hussein Obama--- multiple times. |
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Wed May 21, 2008 4:21 pm |
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Public D
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Thu May 22, 2008 1:21 pm |
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Adam
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080525/ap_on_el_pr/problem_pastors;_ylt=AuJqDXF4raj_dE2UWTBC29MDW7oF
Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, both seeking to use religion to their advantage in the presidential campaign, have learned painful lessons about the risks of getting too close to religious leaders.
Both now realize that sermons given to a narrow audience on Sundays don't always play as well on the national stage, where context can be a casualty. And McCain's rejection of endorsements from two evangelical pastors puts into relief the candidate's problems with that core GOP constituency.
McCain, the Republican nominee-in waiting, and Obama, who is closing in on the Democratic nod, both have been slowed by their respective pastor problems. Whether the controversies will play a role in the months ahead remains unclear, but the two candidates face decisions about how clergy fit into their efforts to reach voters informed by faith.
Clergy who have seen colleagues go from relative obscurity to infamy in the course of a 24-hour news cycle face similar choices in weighing whether to talk about politics and candidates.
"This is the new terrain of religious politics," said David Domke, a University of Washington communications professor and co-author of "The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America." "Politicians have been getting a pass on this for some time, using support from a minister or pastor for their political advantage and not having to answer for what that pastor has said."
Both candidates have reason to pay attention to the faith factor in their White House bids.
Obama, facing false rumors that he is a Muslim, portrays himself as a committed Christian in campaign literature. Obama and Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton employ religious outreach directors and speak freely about their faith, signaling that Democrats will not cede the religious vote to Republicans.
But Obama has been hamstrung by the rhetoric of his former longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose sermons blaming U.S. policies for the Sept. 11 attacks and calls of "God damn America" for its racism became fixtures on the Internet and cable news networks. Obama ultimately cut himself off from Wright.
McCain has sought to shore up evangelicals skeptical about his stances on issues like stem-cell research and his past run-ins with movement leaders. But two evangelical pastors McCain did win over — John Hagee of Texas and Rod Parsley of Ohio — were tied to statements causing offense to all three monotheistic faiths.
Hagee has been criticized as anti-Catholic, but McCain rejected his endorsement only after a Web site unearthed a sermon Hagee gave portraying Hitler as a tool God used to deliver Jews to the promised land.
McCain disowned Parsley's endorsement after ABC News reported that he had called Islam an "anti-Christ" religion and the Prophet Muhammad "the mouthpiece of a conspiracy of spiritual evil."
"Religion can be so effective in mobilizing voters," said John Green, a senior fellow with the Pew Forum for Religion and Public Life. "It can also be particularly damaging if it turns out to be controversial."
McCain supporters say it's unfair to equate his endorsements with the Obama-Wright saga. Wright, after all, was Obama's pastor for 20 years, while neither Hagee nor Parsley ever were pastors to McCain. Obama would have known about Wright's incendiary remarks if he spent any time in church, critics say.
Obama backers counter that a double-standard is at work if the pastors endorsing McCain aren't scrutinized, given that McCain sought them out and praised them as exemplary leaders.
There are differences, but also striking similarities in what befell the two campaigns.
"Wright attracted controversy over sermons and things he said in the context of his church and his tradition of black liberation theology," Green said. "It's the same thing with Hagee. His comments about Hitler and the Catholic Church are much less problematic in the context of his religious community."
A Jewish rabbi from San Antonio who supports Hagee made a similar point about context, saying Hagee was merely lecturing on a perspective of the Holocaust shared by some Jewish scholars.
Not long ago, hearing a pastor's sermon required a visit to church. But with churches posting video on their Web sites and selling audio CDs, the messages are one step removed from YouTube and the scrutiny of reporters, bloggers and opposition researchers on political campaigns.
Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said he was reluctant to weigh in on the Hagee Holocaust controversy because the sermons were nine years old. But as he watched the clips on YouTube and learned that Hagee's church recently distributed the sermons, Yoffie spoke out.
To Yoffie, the episode serves a warning that religious leaders should stick to talking about issues and values when it comes to politics and never endorse candidates.
"(Hagee) threw himself into this controversy he couldn't get out of," he said. "All of a sudden, any comment he made about a values issue was intertwined with the political picture and how it would affect the candidate. It's a good lesson for religious leaders of what to avoid and what happens when you don't."
Pastors may endorse candidates as individuals, but not under the auspices of their congregations.
Phil Burress, president of Citizens for Community Values, an Ohio-based evangelical group, said pastors hold greater influence if they preach to their congregations about where candidates stand on issues.
"Sometimes I think these guys are better off keeping their mouth shut," Burress said. "But they are men of conviction that preach the word of God the way they see it, and if everyone in the evangelical community agreed, we'd have one denomination."
Whether McCain's rejection of Hagee and Parsley will hurt him among evangelicals, Burress said it's hard to say. The evangelical community, after all, is much more diverse than often portrayed, and many evangelicals might disagree with aspects of Hagee and Parsley's theology, he said.
Both political parties' tendency to denounce supporters or fire staff members at the hint of controversy bothers Mark DeMoss, a public relations executive and former executive assistant to Jerry Falwell.
DeMoss volunteered to help Republican Mitt Romney's campaign win evangelical support, and he said he will vote for McCain. But DeMoss said he doesn't think the candidate needed to reject the endorsements.
"When does it stop?" DeMoss said.
"When a pastor becomes a pastor, essentially he becomes a pastor for people who like him and agree with him and subscribe to what he teaches," he said. "When a person becomes a president, he's the president of people who agree with him and don't agree with him. I think the net has to be a little wider."
DeMoss said McCain, already facing an uphill struggle, "may really turn off evangelicals and religious conservatives who think he has just taken political correctness to its extreme." |
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Sun May 25, 2008 2:09 pm |
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slrnow
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Mon May 26, 2008 5:44 am |
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Adam Ford
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Obama disowns his church.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080531/ap_on_el_pr/obama;_ylt=AqOdktw7QAnXjusffm1Kmf4DW7oF
ABERDEEN, S.D. - Barack Obama has resigned his 20 year membership in the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago in the aftermath of inflammatory remarks by his longtime pastor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and more recent fiery remarks at the church by another minister.
Obama campaign communications director Robert Gibbs said Obama had resigned from the church "over the last few days."
Campaign aides said they weren't immediately certain how the resignation took place, whether by letter or in some other fashion, and were trying to find out.
Messages left for a church spokeswoman in Chicago were not immediately returned Saturday afternoon.
The development came as Obama campaigned in South Dakota.
Obama said he disagreed with Wright but initially portrayed him as a family member he couldn't disown. The preacher had officiated at Obama's wedding and been his spiritual mentor for some 20 years.
But six weeks after Obama's well-received speech on race, Wright claimed at an appearance in Washington that the U.S. government was capable of planting AIDS in the black community, praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and suggested that Obama was acting like a politician by putting his pastor at arm's length while privately agreeing with him.
Obama denounced those Wright comments as "divisive and destructive."
Comments by Wright inflamed racial tensions and posed an unwanted problem for Obama, front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, as he seeks to wrap up the nomination.
More recently, racially charged remarks from the same pulpit by another pastor, the Rev. Michael Pfleger, kept the controversy alive and proved the latest thorn in the side of Obama. Pfleger mocked Obama rival Hillary Rodham Clinton as a guest speaker at Obama's church.
Although Obama condemned comments by both Wright and Pfleger, the controversy has persisted.
For months, Obama has been hamstrung by the rhetoric of Wright, whose sermons blaming U.S. policies for the Sept. 11 attacks and calls of "God damn America" for its racism became fixtures on the Internet and cable news networks.
Initially, Obama said he disagreed with Wright but portrayed him as a family member he couldn't disown. The preacher had officiated at Obama's wedding and been his spiritual mentor for some 20 years.
But six weeks after Obama's well-received speech on race, Wright claimed at an appearance in Washington that the U.S. government was capable of planting AIDS in the black community, praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and suggested that Obama was acting like a politician by putting his pastor at arm's length while privately agreeing with him.
On Thursday, Obama was again forced to reject another man of the cloth, this time Pfleger, who made racially charged comments mocking Clinton in a guest sermon at Obama's church.
Obama made it clear he wasn't happy with the comments — in which Pfleger pretended he was Clinton crying over "a black man stealing my show" — and said he was "deeply disappointed in Father Pfleger's divisive, backward-looking rhetoric, which doesn't reflect the country I see or the desire of people across America to come together in common cause."
Pfleger, too, issued an apology, saying he was sorry if his comments offended Clinton or anyone else.
The timing of Obama's decision was clearly planned with an eye toward Washington and the calendar. The news broke late on a Saturday and while most of the political attention was focused on the Democratic National Committee's struggle to seat delegates from Florida and Michigan.
Republican John McCain also has had his woes with religious leaders.
Earlier this month, McCain rejected endorsements from two influential but controversial televangelists, saying there is no place for their incendiary criticisms of other faiths.
McCain spurned the months-old endorsement of Texas preacher John Hagee after an audio recording surfaced in which the preacher said God sent Adolf Hitler to help Jews reach the promised land. McCain called the comment "crazy and unacceptable."
He later repudiated the support of Rod Parsley, an Ohio preacher who has sharply criticized Islam and called the religion inherently violent. |
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Sat May 31, 2008 11:03 pm |
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Adam Ford
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Sat May 31, 2008 11:39 pm |
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Ryan Eashoo
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Sam Riddle is a good friend of mine and fine man, he has done a tremendous amount of work to improve the Flint area!
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_________________
Flint Michigan Resident, Tax Payer, Flint Nutt - Local REALTOR - Activist. www.FlintTown.com |
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Sun Jun 01, 2008 11:33 am |
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Adam
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quote:
Ryan Eashoo schreef:
Sam Riddle is a good friend of mine and fine man, he has done a tremendous amount of work to improve the Flint area!
What has he done besides getting your relative elected? |
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Sun Jun 01, 2008 11:50 am |
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twotap
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| Proof once again Baracko has no loyalty to anyone his only desire is to win to hell with everyone else. |
_________________
"If you like your current healthcare you can keep it, Period"!!
Barack Hussein Obama--- multiple times. |
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Sun Jun 01, 2008 12:06 pm |
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Public D
F L I N T O I D
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Mon Jun 02, 2008 2:46 pm |
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Dave Starr
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quote:
Ryan Eashoo schreef:
Sam Riddle is a good friend of mine and fine man, he has done a tremendous amount of work to improve the Flint area!
Sam's ex was a neighbor a few years ago. She didn't seem to have a very high opinion of him. |
_________________
I used to care, but I take a pill for that now.
Pushing buttons sure can be fun.
When a lion wants to go somewhere, he doesn’t worry about how many hyenas are in the way.
Paddle faster, I hear banjos. |
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Mon Jun 02, 2008 3:03 pm |
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Demeralda
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| I love that you guys know all these tidbits... all stuff I missed from being away from Flint for so long. |
_________________
I'm no model lady. A model's just an imitation of the real thing. - Mae West |
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Tue Jun 03, 2008 1:19 pm |
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Adam
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080603/ap_on_re_us/obama_pfleger
"CHICAGO - Cardinal Francis George asked a Chicago priest on Tuesday to temporarily step down from his post to "reflect on his recent statements" regarding Sen. Hillary Clinton and her bid for the White House.
Last week, the Rev. Michael Pfleger mocked Clinton at Sen. Barack Obama's former church, saying the New York senator felt "entitled" to the Democratic nomination for president.
In a guest sermon at Trinity United Church of Christ, Pfleger pretended he was Clinton crying over "a black man stealing my show."
Pfleger's sermon, along with past controversial statements by Trinity's former longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, led Obama to resign his membership at Trinity. Pfleger apologized for his comments Sunday.
George asked Pfleger to take leave from pastoral duties at St. Sabina Church in order to "reflect on his recent statements and actions in the light of the church's regulations for all Catholic priests," according to a statement Tuesday from the Archdiocese of Chicago.
The leave was effective Tuesday and was scheduled to last "a couple of weeks," the statement said.
Pfleger, who has promised George he would no longer mention any presidential candidates by name, did not believe "this to be the right step at this time," according to the statement.
"While respecting his disagreement, I have nevertheless asked him to use this opportunity to reflect," George said in the statement. "I hope that this period will also be a time away from the public spotlight and for rest and attention to family concerns."
Messages seeking comment were left Tuesday for Pfleger and the Archdiocese of Chicago.
Pfleger, a 59-year-old white priest at a largely black parish, has gained a reputation for impassioned sermons and activism. The Archdiocese said his temporary replacement is the Rev. William Vanecko, pastor of Chicago's St. Kilian Catholic Church."
http://www.archdiocese-chgo.org/
"STATEMENT OF FRANCIS CARDINAL GEORGE, O.M.I.,
ARCHBISHOP OF CHICAGO
June 3, 2008
To put recent events in some perspective, I have asked Father Michael Pfleger, Pastor of St. Sabina’s Parish, to step back from his obligations there and take leave for a couple of weeks from his pastoral duties, effective today. Fr. Pfleger does not believe this to be the right step at this time. While respecting his disagreement, I have nevertheless asked him to use this opportunity to reflect on his recent statements and actions in the light of the Church’s regulations for all Catholic priests. I hope that this period will also be a time away from the public spotlight and for rest and attention to family concerns.
I hope also that the life of St. Sabina’s parish may continue in uninterrupted fashion. Fr. William Vanecko, Pastor of St. Kilian’s parish, will be temporary administrator of St. Sabina’s and will assure the full complement of ministerial services during this period. I ask the members of St. Sabina’s parish to cooperate with him and to keep him and Fr. Pfleger in their prayers. They are in mine. |
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Tue Jun 03, 2008 7:31 pm |
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Adam
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At Obama's Former Church, Hurt Lingers
Black Congregations Feel Marginalized by Uproar
CHICAGO -- They paraded through the summer-like heat last weekend in long dresses and suit coats, hundreds of families following the same paths that lead them to church every Sunday morning. They passed single-story houses and dilapidated parks before entering Trinity United Church of Christ on this city's South Side.
Across town, Sen. Barack Obama dressed in sneakers, jeans and a golf shirt. He was going biking with his wife and two daughters on a rare day off from the campaign. He strapped on a helmet, and his family pedaled north from their Hyde Park neighborhood, toward the big houses on the lake.
A vast distance separates Obama from the church he quit last month, as hurt feelings continue to fester on both sides. Obama, his patience exhausted by the most recent controversial remark from a pastor, said in late May, "Our relations with Trinity have been strained." And some of the church's 8,000 members -- as well as some other black pastors -- feel abandoned, betrayed and misunderstood after their contentious turn in the national spotlight.
This was not how it was supposed to be. Obama, the biracial presidential candidate who has pledged to unite Democrats and Republicans, rich and poor, blacks and whites, was going to provide an opening for Trinity and other black churches to shatter their stereotypes and bolster their national presence. Instead, a landslide of negative video of Trinity's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., and right-wing political attacks left Obama's former church and others like it even more marginalized and vilified.
As the controversy over Trinity crescendoed earlier this month, the church's new pastor, Otis Moss III, released a statement to his congregation: "We, the community of Trinity, are concerned, hurt, shocked, dismayed, frustrated, fearful and heartbroken. . . . We are a wounded people and our wounds, the bruises from our encounter with history, have scarred our very souls."
At the very core of its mission, Trinity seeks to reveal and broadcast racial inequalities. A product of black liberation theology, it teaches members to identify with their African roots and take pride in the African American experience. Sermons sometimes mingle biblical lessons with those learned from slavery or the civil rights movement.
Last month, when asked why he wanted to preach at Trinity, Moss said: "This is a place where the struggle continues, where you can talk about real issues. We can recognize social injustice and then take it on."
Obama has largely sought to avoid discussing race or racism during his presidential campaign, except when it comes to this country's ability to overcome it. His major speech on the issue in March was an attempt to quell controversy over Wright without making race part of his political platform. The Democrat casts himself as a unifier -- the son of a white American woman and a black African man, shaped by white, working-class grandparents and South Chicago's housing projects.
"We may have different stories," he said in March, "but we hold common hopes." And commonality, Obama often indicates, is what Americans should spend their energy discussing, instead of what he termed Wright's "divisive and destructive" rhetoric.
Because of that divide, Obama sent a letter to the church in late May tendering his family's resignation. Obama explained that it was with "some sadness" that he made the decision to leave the church where he discovered Christianity, married his wife and had his children baptized, but that he no longer felt comfortable being associated with the church's provocative rhetoric.
After Obama's decision, Trinity officials stopped speaking with the media and encouraged members to do the same. They refuse to criticize Obama, as does Moss, saying only that he will remain in their prayers.
more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/14/AR2008061401829.html |
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Sun Jun 15, 2008 11:17 am |
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