Hot off the presses from AP (saved to host hard drive if/when AP updates or moves) — In an attempt to stop the bleeding, the candidate I refer to as BOOHOO (Barack O-bomba Overseas Hussein “Obambi” Obama) is throwing the allegedly retired Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright under the bus:

White House hopeful Barack Obama suggests he would have left his Chicago church had his longtime pastor, whose fiery anti-American comments about U.S. foreign policy and race relations threatened Obama’s campaign, not stepped down.

“Had the reverend not retired, and had he not acknowledged that what he had said had deeply offended people and were inappropriate and mischaracterized what I believe is the greatness of this country, for all its flaws, then I wouldn’t have felt comfortable staying at the church,” Obama said Thursday during a taping of the ABC talk show, “The View.” The interview will be broadcast Friday.

Unless I’ve missed it, the Rev. Wright has never “acknowledged that what he had said had deeply offended people and were inappropriate and mischaracterized what I believe is the greatness of this country.”

Assuming that’s the case, three words for Mr. Obama: Completely. Utterly. Unconvincing.

The logic is so easy to follow, even fans of “The View” might understand it.

Here goes.

Point 1: Rev. Wright’s successor at Trinity United Church of Christ is one Otis Moss III.

By the way, notice at the link that the Rev. Wright is STILL listed as “Senior Pastor” (still true as of Friday, March 28 at 3 PM). Has he really “stepped down”? Let’s suspend disbelief for a moment, and move on.

Setting up the next point — McClatchy Newspapers’ Margaret Talev reported the following on March 20:

Wright has said that a basis for Trinity’s philosophies is the work of James Cone, who founded the modern black liberation theology movement out of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. Particularly influential was Cone’s seminal 1969 book, “Black Theology & Black Power.”

Cone wrote that the United States was a white racist nation and the white church was the Antichrist for having supported slavery and segregation.

Today, Cone, a professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York, stands by that view, but also makes clear that he doesn’t believe that whites individually are the Antichrist.

In an interview, Cone said that when he was asked which church most embodied his message, “I would point to that church (Trinity) first.”

There’s Point 2 (despite the slight water-down by Cone): Trinity most embodies James Cone’s hateful, racist “philosophies.”

Setting up Point 3 — Tavel continued:

Cone also said he thought that Wright’s successor, the Rev. Otis Moss III, would continue the tradition.

Obama, 46, who’s biracial, joined Trinity in his late twenties when he worked as a community organizer. He says he’ll continue to worship there.

So there’s Point 3: Obama will continue to worship at a church whose successor is not expected to be different from Wright, and who will therefore remain a propagator of hateful, racist “philosophies.”

Note that I am not trying to claim that the hostesses on “The View” will be able to follow this. We’ll have to go to the tape tomorrow to find out.

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UPDATE: The Rev. “Evils of MiddleClassness” Wright is apparently going to be spending his retirement in a brand-new ….. 10,340 square foot home in a ….. wait for this ….. gated community (HT Gate[d]way Pundit).

UPDATE 2, March 28: Tom Maguire has an Obama BS take and roundup, though I think he’s missing Obama’s attempted point — He is still a TUCC member because Wright retired. From Obama’s perspective, once the retirement occurred, Wright’s need to “acknowledge that what he had said had deeply offended people and were inappropriate and mischaracterized what I believe is the greatness of this country, for all its flaws” disappeared. Wright can go on to become the next H. Rap Brown and it wouldn’t matter to Obama, who is staying at TUCC because Wright is no longer pastor.

Of course, getting Wright off the TUCC web as “Senior Pastor” (as of 3 PM Friday) would be helpful in convincing the skeptical.

Imagine that — It turns out that crossing over goes in both directions (HT Ben Keeler at The Point):

About 17,100 Republicans and 3,000 Democrats in Cuyahoga County (CC) switched parties in the March 4 primary, the county Board of Elections found during an investigation of whether voters lied when they signed affidavits pledging allegiance to their new party.

But Ohio’s elections chief warned Tuesday against prosecuting any of these 20,119 crossover voters because doing so could be a violation of free-speech rights.

Oh, this is great; bi-partisan “poster boys” and bi-partisan show trials. Bring, it, on.

Keeler has much more to say about this:

This whole notion is just dumb. CC Board of Elections member Sandy McNair wants county prosecutor Bill Mason to look into this whole situation (now known as Rush Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos”). Mason said “It’s going to be very difficult if not impossible to make a case against a voter who has switched parties.” No kidding. The county’s prosecutors office is overworked as is, you know, with stuff that is actually important.

Indeed. How are those prosecutions relating to Cleveland’s 134 murders last year going?

Ironic: Kos said that Dems crossing over to vote for Romney in Michigan in January would be “hav(ing) some fun.”

Now, delusional Dems in Ohio, some of whom said the exact same thing in January, along with some in Ohio’s Old Media (but I repeat myself) characterize GOPers crossing over to vote Democratic as “malicious.” But that must be the case with the thousands of Dems now shown to have crossed over to vote for Republicans in the very same election, right?

The only thing that would be truly malicious would be any kind of prosecution. From here, it seems that if CC prosecutes, the persons charged would:
a) win,
b) own Cuyahoga County after winning a malicious-prosecution civil suit or settlement, and
c) once they assume ownership, run it better with their eyes closed than the people supposedly doing it now.

This is nothing to celebrate, but at least those rooting for bad news are going to be forced to wait until late April to claim that we’re halfway into a recession, which is defined as two or more quarters of negative growth (except by a pretend-”nonpartisan” organization that likes to think otherwise — see previous discussion of that cohort at this 2006 BizzyBlog post).

The government’s final report on Fourth Quarter 2007 GDP came in unchanged today:

Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — increased at an annual rate of 0.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007, according to final estimates released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

I had thought there would be upward revisions after the initial 0.6% announcement. My guess was incorrect.

It’s also a guess, but I think that that the first quarter will come in barely positive, this time by only a couple of tenths of a percent. We’ll see.

America’s leading intellectual unmasks the radical politics of the presidential candidate I refer to as BOOHOO (Barack O-bomba Overseas Hussein “Obambi” Obama):

It is painful to watch defenders of Barack Obama tying themselves into knots trying to evade the obvious.

Some are saying that Senator Obama cannot be held responsible for what his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, said. In their version of events, Barack Obama just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time — and a bunch of mean-spirited people are trying to make something out of it.

It makes a good story, but it won’t stand up under scrutiny.

Barack Obama’s own account of his life shows that he consciously sought out people on the far left fringe.

….. Obama didn’t just happen to encounter Jeremiah Wright, who just happened to say some way out things. Jeremiah Wright is in the same mold as the kinds of people Barack Obama began seeking out in college — members of the left, anti-American counter-culture.

Sowell wraps with an excellent analogy regarding the Rev. Wright, followed by a clear statement of what Wright and his ilk have done to the those they supposedly “serve”:

Among the many desperate gambits by defenders of Senator Obama and Jeremiah Wright is to say that Wright’s words have a “resonance” in the black community.

There was a time when the Ku Klux Klan’s words had a resonance among whites, not only in the South but in other states. Some people joined the KKK in order to advance their political careers. Did that make it OK? Is it all just a matter of whose ox is gored?

While many whites may be annoyed by Jeremiah Wright’s words, a year from now most of them will probably have forgotten about him. But many blacks who absorb his toxic message can still be paying for it, big-time, for decades to come.

Why should young blacks be expected to work to meet educational standards, or even behavioral standards, if they believe the message that all their problems are caused by whites, that the deck is stacked against them? That is ultimately a message of hopelessness, however much audacity it may have.

Read the whole thing.

I understand that Barack Obama doesn’t want to be called a liberal. “Radical” will do just fine.

Pulse reported (HT Instapundit) in the McCain campaign: “McCain Asks When Hillary Clinton Will Apologize to Gen. Petraeus” — Actually a good move by the candidate I refer to as JS3M3 (John Sidney the Mad Maverick McCain III). Go to the link and you’ll see then (”willing suspension of disbelief”) and now (”an extraordinary leader and a wonderful advocate for our military”) vids.

HR4C’s (Hillary Rodham Cackling Crying Complaining Clinton’s) about-face was also noted here (fourth item at link) on Monday.

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Too easy to resist (HT Taranto at Best of the Web):

No-show state rep from Manchester resigns
Tuesday, Mar. 25, 2008

In the 16 months since he was sworn in, state Rep. Michael R. DesRoches did not cast a single vote. Colleagues in the House say they have not seen him in Concord this session.

They won’t be seeing him in the future, either. DesRoches announced his resignation yesterday, explaining he was recently evicted from his apartment in downtown Manchester and no longer lives in the district he was elected to represent.

Gee, that never stopped Democrats Charlie Wilson (current congressman in OH-06) or John Boccieri (running for Congress in OH-16).

(By the way, other carpetbagging examples are welcome in comments or via e-mail.)

It’s also worth noting that the Union Leader, one of the few papers in the US that plays the news relatively straight (if somewhat right of center), didn’t play “Hide the Party ID” — and it went on:

Three other state representatives from Manchester — Sandra Smith, George Katsiantonis and Hector Velez — had yet to cast any votes this year, according to the House Web site. All are Democrats.

Brunelle, a Democrat, said absenteeism is a non-partisan problem that has flared in the past.

Color me skeptical, Mr. Brunelle.

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Leftwing Cracker (HT Knoxnews.com) says, in the wake of the Hillary Clinton Bosnia “misstatement” (don’t you love how Old Media will never say that a Democrat “lied”?) that:

(Hillary is) more done than a two-hour steak at 500 degrees.

One problem: I think a steak that hot could catch fire, burn the house down, and take out everyone else inside.

LWC is on to something.

It’s here.

I will post it Sunday afternoon or evening under the title, “The Ford Boycott’s Results Demonstrate the Folly of Corporate Reliance on Old Media.”

From Norfolk, VA:

March 23, 2008

A man thrown from the motorcycle he was operating after a high-speed wreck early Saturday was pulled ashore by two Navy men who jumped into the Hampton Roads Channel to rescue him.

A third sailor also assisted.

The cyclist, identified as Brian Anthony Davis, 22, of Grand Rapids, Mich., also is in the Navy, stationed aboard the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Davis remains in critical condition at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital.

The wreck happened about 3:45 a.m. Saturday on the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel, said Sgt. Michelle Cotten, a State Police spokeswoman.

Davis was westbound on Interstate 64, allegedly “in excess of 100 mph,” Cotten said, when he apparently lost control as he approached the entrance of the tunnel.

The 2002 Suzuki he was on slammed into a wall. The impact flung him from the highway to the water alongside the bridge-tunnel complex.

Davis might have drowned if not for the fast action of three fellow service members who happened upon the scene.

They were identified as:

• Third class petty officer Edgar Ardon, 22, an aviation support equipment technician from Glen Oak, Calif.

• Third class petty officer Jason Murphy, 23, a fire controlman from Jacksonville, Fla.

• Third class petty officer Elisandro Leal, 22, a damage controlman from League City, Texas.

All three sailors are temporarily assigned to the Carl Vinson’s on-board security force, said Lt. j.g. Arlo Abrahamson, a public affairs officer for the carrier.

The ship is docked at the Northrop Grumman Newport News shipyard where it is undergoing a major overhaul and receiving upgrades as well as having its nuclear fuel replenished.

The three men “are assigned to a shift that normally works nights,” Abrahamson said. But, to Davis’ good fortune, they were off duty at the time of the incident.

The three men were returning to their residences in Newport News from Norfolk in the pre-dawn darkness.

Leal was driving when they saw the wreck happen and stopped to see what they could do to help.

He was the first to spot Davis, catching sight of the man’s motorcycle helmet, floating in water alongside the span.

“Once we saw him in the water, we knew we had to do something to help,” he said.

Leal stayed with his vehicle and used a cell phone to alert police while his buddies clambered over railings and down to the water’s edge to rescue Davis.

By then, Davis was “face down in the water,” about 25 feet from the span, Cotten said.

Ardon and Murphy ripped off their outer clothes, down to their skivvies, and jumped into the 52-degree water. They grabbed hold of Davis and brought him to the barrier of huge rocks that rings the southern island of the bridge-tunnel.

Davis had stopped breathing, so Ardon began cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The man showed signs of life, coughing up water.

Soon after, paramedics and firefighters arrived and took over efforts to save and stabilize Davis who was revived.

Even then, his rescuers did not immediately leave his side.

“I just told him to keep breathing and to relax,” said Ardon. “We wanted to reassure him that everything was going to be okay.” The men said their military training made the rescue possible. …..

Go here for the rest of the story.