Obama Reports Charitable Contributions to Trinity United

Barack Obama's tax returns show a reported income of more the $4 million for 2007, the Associated Press reports.

But what's particularly eye-popping here is the substantial tithe Obama paid to Trinity United Church of Christ, the home-pulpit of America-bashing black liberationist Reverend Jeremiah Wright:

Democratic Sen. Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, made $4.2 million last year as widespread interest in the presidential candidate pushed the sales of his two books.

In tax returns the campaign released Wednesday, the Obamas reported a significant jump in their income from the previous year as profits from the books "Dreams From My Father" and "The Audacity of Hope" accounted for some $4 million. The Obamas paid federal taxes of $1.4 million and donated $240,370 to charity.

Their salaried income was $260,735, which included his $157,102 salary as a U.S. senator and hers of $103,633 as vice president of community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Medical Center.

For part of 2007, Michelle Obama collected a salary for serving on the board of Westchester, Ill.-based TreeHouse Foods Inc., which produces pickles, nondairy powdered creamer and other products. She resigned in May after two years on the board.

The position had generated some complaints because TreeHouse is a supplier to Wal-Mart, and Barack Obama has criticized some of Wal-Mart's policies and treatment of employees.

The Obamas reported $29,443 from Treehouse Foods.

In 2006, Obama and his wife reported income of $991,296. The sum included Obama's Senate salary of $157,082 and his wife's earnings of $273,618 from her position as an administrator at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Michelle Obama also earned $51,200 in director's fees from TreeHouse Inc., a food distributor.

They paid $277,431 in federal taxes — an overpayment of $40,856, which they designated for estimated tax payments this year.

Among the charitable donations in 2007 was $26,270 to Trinity United Church of Christ, where the incendiary sermons of Obama's former pastor have created problems for the candidate. The Obamas' largest charitable donation was $50,000 to the United Negro College Fund. They also gave $35,000 to CARE.

The campaign released the returns just hours before a candidate debate with rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Think of the significance of this reporting:

Obama, a millionaire, can be situated among the Democratic Party's socioeconomic demographic most comfortable in condescending to lower status white voters (working class Americans were "aspirational," and not "downtrodden," according to recent commentary and analysis).

He also has given tens of thousands of dollars to a church which sponsors religious teachings holding that the United States itself is responsible for the 9/11 attacks, which killed nearly three thousand innocents.

Yet, while Obama has refused to renounce all ties to that hate-backing religious institution, his wife, Michelle, quit the board of Treehouse Foods because of ties to Walmart, a corporation that accounts for a major portion of the increase in living standards (through its low-price policies) for millions of the same lower income people that the Illinois Senator has attacked as bitter.

Now that is just disastrously symbolic of how out of touch - no, anti-American - Barack Obama really is, not just in his refusal to sever all ties to "GOD DAMN AMERICA" theology, nor in his elitist condescension, but in his abject, snobbily hypocritical pandering to the very interest group that he's dependent on for election in the fall.

Now that's something worthy of some attention!

For more on Obama, see the coverage of last night's ABC News Democratic debate.