You can think of Father Michael Pfleger as the white Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Not only does Father Michael Pfleger have a longstanding association with Wright and his Church, he has longstanding ties to Louis Farrakhan, so much so that Farrakhan has even spoken at Father Michael Pfleger's St. Sabina church.

Like Wright, Father Michael Pfleger has close ties to Barack Hussein Obama and Father Michael Pfleger's endorsement appears on Obama's faith endorsements page, where Jeremiah Wright's used to be... before he became too much of an embarrassment.

Father Michael Pfleger however has gained notoriety for more than his embrace of Farrakhan, he also became infamous when at a rally with Jesse "Hymietown" Jackson, he threatened to "snuff" politicians who supported gun rights.

Rev. Michael Pfleger, pastor of St. Sabina’s Church, went way over the top this week. During a protest against Chuck’s Gun Shop, Father Pfleger twice threatened to “snuff out” the shop’s owner and threatened the same fate for legislators who oppose his position on gun control.

“We’re gonna find you and snuff you out,” Fleger said about the gun shop owner, likening the man to a “rat.” He later repeated his threat to “snuff out” the owner.

“We’re gonna snuff out legislators who are voting [garbled] against our gun laws and we’re coming for you because we are not going to sit idly.”

With that kind of violent mindset and hateful rhetoric, it's no surprise that Father Michael Pfleger is so close to Louis Farrakhan. Or that he's used violent rhetoric when threatening critics of Obama.

So Father Pfleger is out with a warning: "Do not touch this man," he says, "for if you do, you will answer to us all."

Or that he's tried to carry water for him. Father Michael Pfleger like Jeremiah Wright has a close relationship to Farrakhan and a close relationship to Obama. A closer one than he does to his own Cardinal Francis George who has questioned whether he should even be a priest and at one point reassigned him entirely.

Father Michael Pfleger ministers to Saint Sabina, an African American Catholic church a short distance from the Nation's main mosque, Mosque Maryam.

I've known the minister (Farrakhan) both as someone who I have great respect for as a prophetic voice, as a mentor but also as a friend and as a brother. We've become very close friends over the years. Our families have been close; he's shared dinner at my house as I have at his many, many times. He has preached from our pulpit here
at this church on three different occasions. We've worked together on issues not only for this community but in the city and in the nation.

Not content with hosting one rabid racist and anti-semite, Father Michael Pfleger also turned St. Sabina into a forum for Al Sharpton, who was responsible for a number of murders of Jews and non-Jews. Harry Belafonte showed up at St. Sabina also to blame America for 9/11. .

"We move about the world arrogantly, calling wars when we want, overthrowing governments when we want. There is a price to be paid for it — look at 9/11.

Sept. 11 "wasn't just Bin Laden. Bin Laden didn't come from the abstract. He came from somewhere, and if you look where ... you'll see America's hand of villainy."

Pfleger defended the Nation of Islam repeatedly and insulted Jewish critics of NOI as "narrow minded" Father Michael Pfleger also invited Kareem Irfan, former chairman of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago to speak on the anniversary of 9/11. Kareem Irfan is infamous for excusing beheadings by terrorists and is an ISNA member, a Saudi subsidized Wahhabi group with close ties to terrorism.



In September 2002, Father Pfleger led a rally at the Dirksen Federal Building condemning the destruction of Arafat's compound

Obama and Pfleger share a longstanding relationship of 20 years, like Obama and Wright. And like Wright, Michael Pfleger is described as Obama's moral compass.

Friends and advisers, such as the Rev. Michael Pfleger, pastor of St. Sabina Roman Catholic Church in the Auburn- Gresham community on the South Side, who has known Obama for the better part of 20 years, help him keep that compass set, he says.

"I always have felt in him this consciousness that, at the end of the day, with all of us, you've got to face God," Pfleger says of Obama. "Faith is key to his life, no question about it. It is central to who he is, and not just in his work in the political field, but as a man, as a black man, as a husband, as a father.... I don't think he could easily divorce his faith from who he is."

The Rev. Michael Pfleger has been closely involved in Obama's campaign, hosting faith forums for Obama and Obama, like Farrakhan, found Pfleger's St. Sabina's pulpit convenient for his political agitation, in violation of election laws.

The Rev. Michael Pfleger contributed to Obama's campaign and in turn Obama redirected a $225,000 grant to St. Sabina.

One of those long-time supporters was Rev. Michael Pfleger, the politically active leader of St. Sabina Church. He gave Obama's campaign $1,500 between 1995 and 2001, including $200 in April 2001, about three months after Obama announced $225,000 in grants to St. Sabina programs.

And so one hand washes another and one radical kicks back to another.

As Fr. Michael Pfleger describes it, Obama joined a Church in order to gain credibility during his organizing days. The same might apply to Pfleger himself who appears to be as much of a Priest as Rabbi Michael Lerner is a Rabbi. His pulpit is a convenient forum for his left wing political agenda. Much like Obama's supposed Christian faith.

After his mother was remarried, to an Indonesian Muslim, and the family moved to Indonesia, Obama went first to a Catholic academy and then a public Muslim school open to students of all beliefs.

But he was largely indifferent toward religion until he moved to Chicago in 1985 for a job organizing impoverished South Side residents in campaigns for better jobs, schools, and housing. As the recent college graduate went from church to church to enlist clergy in his causes, he heard an oft-repeated refrain: What church do you belong to?

"He really came here with a very strong passion about how can we change things, and he understood the churches as being a vehicle for doing that," recalls the Rev. Michael Pfleger, pastor of the Saint Sabina Church, a Catholic church on the South Side, who has known Obama since his early days in Chicago. But he also "realized that with some churches there would be a credibility issue if he were organizing churches but didn't have a home church."

It helps with that Presidential run too. Unfortunately the clergy Obama has chosen to closely associate himself with seem to repeatedly focus on men like Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pfleger, whose anti-american politics coincide with his and who embrace Farrakhan. It becomes too much of a coincidence for Obama to try and pretend that his closest spiritual mentors hold different beliefs than he does that he was not aware of. Not when they were and are this up front.

For credibility's sake Obama is willing to join a church. And for credibility's sake, he's willing to disavow the churches he's joined when they become politically inconvenient. With Rev. Michael Pfleger, it's no longer possible to play the defensive race card. It only remains to admit the truth.

Update May 29/08 - Pfleger at Trinity Church





Three months later, Obama finally jettisons Pfleger. Of course I'm sure this was a huge shock to Obama. Right. Pfleger's endorsement is now off the website. But don't worry, the one thing Obama does not have a shortage of is hate filled ministers. 12 comments Permalink Email Post (Backlinks)

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