LIBERAL NY TIMES: OBAMA SPEAKS ABOUT WAR BUT IT WAS REALLY ABOUT HIS EVIL PASTOR

The NY Times isn't an official part of the Republican Noise Machine. Sometimes, though-- often, in fact-- they are thick enough so that the distinction is irrelevant. Brian Knowlton and Jeff Zeleny actually managed to turn their story on Obama's speech today, which explained the relationship between the Iraq War that the Times worked so hard to help Bush get public approval for (by printing unsubstantiated reports-- for which they have since apologized and admitted had zero basis in fact-- that Iraq had a ready nuclear arsenal) and the tanking economy, into more GOP propaganda on Jeremiah Wright. Watch the blatant innuendoes in the first two paragraphs:

Senator Barack Obama tried again on Thursday to shift his campaign away from a focus on race that had threatened to envelop his candidacy, and bring other issues to the fore, notably the Iraq war and the economy.

[Is that what Obama was doing? Or was he delivering a long-scheduled speech on an important issue the Times would rather its readers not think to much about, considering its own well-documented complicity?]

There were signs that Mr. Obama, an Illinois Democrat, may have suffered political damage from the firestorm over provocative comments made by his former minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. A nationwide Gallup poll showed Senator Hillary Clinton of New York taking a statistically significant lead over Mr. Obama in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, for the first time since early February, just after the Super Tuesday primaries. Mr. Obama continues to lead Mrs. Clinton in the tally of pledged convention delegates won.

At least they correctly identified the cause of the damage as "the firestorm," although they don't explain how the corporate media decided to create that particular storm. Or why? That would be journalism, something the Times keeps as far from as they can these days. Today James Carney and Amy Sullivan at least realized they should try over at Time Magazine: The Origin of Obama's Pastor Problem. Unfortunately, they attempted it with both hands and both feet tied behind their backs. There was basically no mention of the manufacturing process of the firestorm-- too close for comfort for mass media, I suppose.

Long before the sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright became instant hits on YouTube and talk-show fodder for the cable news channels, Barack Obama knew he had a preacher problem. On the eve of launching his campaign for the White House in February 2007, Obama abruptly withdrew an invitation to Wright to deliver the invocation at his announcement speech in Springfield, Ill. Wright had been Obama's pastor for nearly 20 years. He had brought Obama into the church, helped him find his faith in God, officiated at Obama's wedding and baptized both his children. But Wright had also said a lot of incendiary things from his pulpit about America over the years, things that would be awkward to explain away for a politician hoping to unite the country and become the first African-American President of the United States.