alt.politics.gw-bush

Obama invokes Bible in NOLA
(CNN) - Speaking to Sunday church congregants in New Orleans, Democratic
presidential candidate Barack Obama invoked Jesus' Sermon on the Mount days
before the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

"Getting ready to talk to you today, I recall what Jesus said at the end of
the Sermon on the Mount," Obama said at New Orleans' First Emmanuel Baptist
Church. "He said, whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them, I will
liken him to a wise man who built his house on a rock."

"The rains descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that
house. But it did not fall, because it was founded on the rock," he
continued.

That rock, he said, was a principal of brotherhood exemplified by the church
during Hurricane Katrina - but not the federal government.

"Something was wrong in America. Our foundation wasn't built on the rock,"
he said.

Obama blasted local, state and federal response to the storm, and touched
upon ingredients necessary for the city's rebuilding, namely more employment
opportunities for residents to rebuild, community-based law enforcement to
tackle the city's crime epidemic, and improved health care.

President George Bush and several presidential candidates plan to visit New
Orleans this week to commemorate the hurricane's anniversary.

Obama spent Saturday in Miami, where he brushed aside criticisms of running
his campaign on the intangible platform of hope, calling himself a "hope
monger," and proposed easing travel restriction with Cuba.