Jeremiah and Me: Obama's Experience

How is it that Barack Obama needed so many years to finally disown his religious and spiritual adviser, Jeremiah Wright (if you can call his speeches to that effect as sufficient to disown Wright), and yet we're supposed to believe that Obama is a leader with leadership qualities? He's flunked the leadership test on something as simple as denouncing his racist and hate-mongering religious leader and spiritual adviser for the past two decades.

Consider that in the past few days we've heard Obama say first that he hadn't heard Wright make those statements, only to admit that he heard some of them, but that they were taken out of context. Now, we hear that Obama disagrees with them. We hear that had Obama heard Wright say those things, he would have confronted Wright. We then hear Obama claim that Wright was justified to say those kinds of things because of the history of racism.

Yet, Obama jumped ugly on Don Imus just a week after he makes that statement? Figures. It's called jumping on a bandwagon to burnish credentials.

He's not showing leadership throughout the whole mess, and despite yesterday's speech, which some are hoping to call one of the greatest of our generation, the speech shows his shortcomings by failing to address Wright's racism, hate-speech, anti-Semitism, and anti-Americanism at every juncture until it was politically impossible to avoid. That doesn't show leadership in this area. It shows that he was incapable of dealing with the issues posed by Wright's outlandish and vile statements of hatred for two decades. How then, are we to believe that Obama could deal with issues of more significance as President of the United States. Where exactly are Obama's principles?

UPDATE:
I'm not alone in questioning Obama's ability to bring change to America. Ed Morrissey muses that if he couldn't bring about change to his own church - to rid it of the racist and hateful rhetoric used by Rev. Wright, how can he do so for all America? ABC News also reports that they've found contradictions between what Obama claimed in his speech and his prior statements about what he knew of Wright's venomous speeches. Those discrepancies serve to expose Obama for nothing more than a run of the mill politician.

Meanwhile, Jammie finds that Obama's received an unusual endorsement - from the New Black Panther Party.

And this foul stench is causing Obama to lose his once huge lead in polls.

Others blogging: Bob Owens.

UPDATE:
Well, it took them long enough, but the Obama campaign has taken down the endorsement from the New Black Panthers. Nice. Even better was their explanation.

Obama spokeswoman Tiffany Edwards said before the campaign removed the endorsement that that section of the Web site “has nothing to do with us.”

It's the Obama campaign website, so for them to say that it had nothing to do with Obama is beyond parody. It's cognitive dissonance.