But who wants to have an argument just about slavery? I'm pretty sure that vast majority of Americans agree that slavery was very, very bad.

I actually like what CorpMediaSux said (which is unusual for me). Mentioning slavery lets us see how far we've come as a nation wrt to race. It can be a logical, and even uplifting way to being a conversation. NOT, I hesitate to add, a conversation about slavery itself, but a conversation about how far we've come from slavery and where we should go from here.

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To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society. -Theodore Roosevelt

The media's coverage of Obama has turned into the Audacity of Nope! It's in the culture people. We live in an increasingly troubling society of people who prop up intelligent people, and then gleefully stab and prod and set them on fire.

What does it say about America that we don't even care whose smart or reasonned, no matter who makes sense, the minute that person gets the spotlight, let's tear them down into a bloody pulp.

Oh, boohooo, Obama's preacher is a fanatical weirdo. HELLOOOOOO! What about Bush who we elected twice? Aren't his preachers just as bad?

I thought Obama's speech was alright but redundant. Americans are just turning into really bored and lazy people who like to turn on their fellow citizens. Part of it is that America is such a wealthy and comfortable country divided by two endless wars and a potentially crippling recession.

We're almost at some kind of great precipice right now, but half of all adult voters watch reality shows and stuff their faces.

A presidential election year is the best time for a nation to stare at itself long and hard in the mirror. A time of renewal and examination that could lead to big changes. But it's all devolving into the same old crap.

Obama, Clinton, McAmnesty. It doesn't matter. They'll all ask for more war funding while continuing to bankrupt the country by aggressively stealing hard-earned taxpayer money and waging wars on third-world countries.

I mean, how desperate have we become that we're afraid of little shit countries that never attacked us?

What?

What?!?

What?!?!?

I'm not sure what you're talking about now. It sounds like you've launched off into some sort of argument against 'white guilt,' reparations, and affirmative action (all of which I think are flawed ideas, btw).

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To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society. -Theodore Roosevelt

Nope, I disagree with him on the vast majority of policy issues and plan to vote for McCain in November.

I just think he gave a damn good speech and deserves credit for it. It doesn't make him a good candidate for president, it justs make it a damn good speech.

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To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society. -Theodore Roosevelt

That's really true. Talk about slavery and you can trace where we've come since then.

We lead ourselves to other problems fitting of a society that has shown much progress overall in terms of race relations, but not enough progress at stripping away the ridiculous idea of putting people into collective groups instead of seeing them as individuals.

The politically savvy people around here and elsewhere are judging Obama and Clinton by what they say, their ideas, their charisma even. But when I talk to average people who don't really follow politics, or to average people who vote but still don't really follow politics, they keep saying the same things these last few months: Is America more ready for a black guy or a white woman?

I hear that and have to get into it with every "mainstream" type and I have to spell it out to them that they shouldn't be loooking at things that way, that they should be looking at Obama and Hillary as individuals and where they stand on the issues.

We've made tonnes of progress, but we're still not quite there yet.

I give Obama much credit on his speech. The guy is a master of the mechanics of political combat.

For quite awhile, his opponents in Hillary's camp and the GOP camp have been trying to find a way to wreck his momentum. Choosing to go after his pastor was intended as a great way to accomplish that.

If the GOP or Hillary can cast and characterise Obama as 'the black candidate' and/or stealth sympathiser with black nationalism, it stands to stir up both white and black triggers on race for which his opponents stand to take advantage of it.

Moreover, the trap had many edges to it. If Obama repudiates the minister, nobody would also take it seriously, and his opponents could frame him as a political opportunist with the addition of seeing him potentially alienate black voters who would hopefully see him as pandering to whites. By endorsing the pastor, then Obama could be framed as a 'black candidate/black nationalist to rebut his 'coming together' arguments and his appeal with white voters.

On pure analysis, accoutability, and fairness, the attack is illegitimate on its merits.

First, what one man says is not what another man says. What any priest or pastor has said in any of the many churches I have attended are not words of mine. They speak for themselves and I speak for my own.

Second, rarely does anyone abandon a church because of lack of agreement on certain aspects of what any pastor or priest says. I have a litany of objections to what many pastors and priests have said. I have always felt free to attend anyway. In fact, many times I have left having debates with family over what was said, whether that be agreement, disagreement or a bit of both regarding what was said.

Third, it's commonplace for many pastors and priests to say controversial things about the nation. If I had a dime for every time I heard a pastor or priest condemn the nation in strong and fiery terms for allowing abortion for example, I'd be a rich man today. I'd be even richer for attacks if I added I've heard on concerning other subjects. Having attended different denominations, I've even been graced with attacks of one denomination upon another besides the 'immorality issues' of the nation (anti-Catholic being a prominent one).

Still, the attack was a clever one given fairness and consistency are not rules of political combat. 'Whatever works' is the rule.

Yet, Obama balanced the issues involved the the attack scheme and even turned the tables as best he could by utilising his and his wife's biracial experiences and spoke frankly of the kinds of issues that beset white and blacks about race and welded them into arguments about moving forward, and even how his own ethnic composition and experience plus his outlook for the future show evidence of the paths of race in the nation from the past to the present and hopefully into the future. He refocused the debate in the process, and it will increasingly appear that those seeking to polarise playing the pastor drum are those up to racial and political mischief.

Obama's a sharp one for sure in my view. He has the knack to handle the mechanics of political gamesmanship very deftly.

While I am no fan of "Faux News" I found this article interesting:

Obama Web Site Still Carries New Black Panther Party Endorsement - America’s Election HQ

Clinton camp would die for it to remain under thick clothes of the American mind, instead of being directly addressed by Barack Obama himself. Once again, Obama showed his excellence in cut-throat political race.

Realism lies between Hope and Cynicism...

But all are based on a sliding scale of perceived odds. The odds of making America a greater country than it is today are not calculable, so how can one contend to be a realist in this regard?

When the odds are not known, each person's outlook is usually determined by their default optimistic or pessimistic disposition.

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Congratulations President-Elect Obama

I simply don't see it that way - but I do think the primary reason is that I cannot and will not dismiss those comments by Wright.

If John McCain turned out to have been mentored by a bigoted, rage-filled leader in the KKK, and dedicated his book to him, I would not give McCain another thought. I would never consider voting for him.

I do not understand why the most ardent Obama supporters are so willing to suspend their own critical judgment and dismiss those truly disgraceful and outrageous comments. Most of this forum is pro-Obama, and I had a high opinion of him in some ways until recently, but this willingness to turn a blind eye is just weird.

So many of us wonder how it is that politicians of both parties get away with so many things. This is a living illustration. You seem besotted by him.

I don't know what else there is to say. I actually do find it depressing and disturbing. How can so many people be so infatuated with a candidate that they are willing to overlook this?

Dilettante,

It seems that your voice of reason will be not be heard by some. I only want to applaud you for walking your talk, (per our earlier conversation) and do my best to emulate your ethics. It's a long way to November and there's too much at stake to get sidetracked with distractions.



Johnny K

That's a non issue too concerning winning new coverts IMO. Many polarising people endorse Hillary and McCain too. Many anti-Catholic ministers endorse McCain for example. Does that mean McCain is anti-Catholic himself? He hasn't appeared so to me at any point. I also highly doubt those endorsements will turn off Catholic Republicans stumping for McCain already or even most undecideds.

Candidates can't dictate who endorses them. Obama said as much when the same kind of attack was made on him regarding Louis Farrakhan. When Hillary tried to make his endorsement an issue, Obama denounced Farrakhan's endorsement but said he can't dictate who endorses him. Again, IMO, Obama handles that attempted wedge inroad attempt cleverly against her, and simply made her look like she was the one up to racially themed mischief.

Moreover, an endorsement doesn't mean agreement on all issues between the candidate and the endorser.

My guess is that black nationalists will endorse Obama over any Republican even if Obama does not agree with black nationalism and see the GOP as up to games by playing him off them and not want either Obama or themselves be willing to play it.

Obama is, IMO, too fast for these games. Being biracial, he's probably more familiar with the debate and how to handle them quickly just by personal experience. Hillary or the GOP keeping up with these games will continue to backfire as he turns the tables on them and exposes the artists as the ones doing the race baiting.

What has the best chance of working, if one wants Obama to lose, is to focus on the issues and experiences, i.e., comparing the resumes, proposed plans and objectives, etc, of one's preferred candidate over him. The race game isn't going to win or lose any minds that aren't already disposed to vote for or against him.

I don't think many people are suspending their judgments or turning a blind eye; the man denounced the comments themselves which was sufficient for many people.
I understand if you feel he should have done more to distance himself. I was satisfied, but I supposed that doesn't mean everyone has to be.

Besotted? As I said, I plan to vote against him in November. I just think it was a good speech.

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To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society. -Theodore Roosevelt

* Here we have Thomas Sowell, a black man, commenting on Obamas speech.

What we have here is a black man who, unlike obama, isn't STILL worrying and seething about RACE and racism.

What he says here makes perfect sense. *


Did Senator Barack Obama's speech in Philadelphia convince people that he is still a viable candidate to be President of the United States, despite the adverse reactions to statements by his pastor, Jeremiah Wright?

The polls and the primaries will answer that question.

The great unasked question for Senator Obama is the question that was asked about President Nixon during the Watergate scandal; What did he know and when did he know it?

Although Senator Obama would now have us believe that he is shocked, shocked, at what Jeremiah Wright said, that he was not in the church when pastor Wright said those things from the pulpit, this still leaves the question of why he disinvited Wright from the event at which he announced his candidacy for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination a year ago.

Either Barack Obama or his staff must have known then that Jeremiah Wright was not someone whom they wanted to expose to the media and to the media scrutiny to which that could lead.

Why not, if it is only now that Senator Obama is learning for the first time, to his surprise, what kinds of things Jeremiah Wright has been saying and doing?

No one had to be in church the day Wright made his inflammatory and obscene remarks to know about them.

The cable news journalists who are playing the tapes of those sermons were not there. The tapes were on sale in the church itself. Obama knew that because he had bought one or more of those tapes.

But even if there were no tapes, and even if Obama never heard from other members of the church what their pastor was saying, he spent 20 years in that church, not just as an ordinary member but also as someone who once donated $20,000 to the church.

There was no way that he didn't know about Jeremiah Wright's anti-American and racist diatribes from the pulpit.

Someone once said that a con man's job is not to convince skeptics but to enable people to continue to believe what they already want to believe.

Accordingly, Obama's Philadelphia speech -- a theatrical masterpiece -- will probably reassure most Democrats and some other Obama supporters. They will undoubtedly say that we should now "move on," even though many Democrats have still not yet moved on from George W. Bush's 2000 election victory.

Like the Soviet show trials during their 1930s purges, Obama's speech was not supposed to convince critics but to reassure supporters and fellow-travelers, in order to keep the "useful idiots" useful.

Best-selling author Shelby Steele's recent book on Barack Obama ("A Bound Man") has valuable insights into both the man and the circumstances facing many other blacks -- especially those who were never part of the black ghetto culture but who feel a need to identify with it for either personal, political or financial reasons.

Like religious converts who become more Catholic than the Pope, such people often become blacker-than-thou. For whatever reason, Barack Obama chose a black extremist church decades ago -- even though there was no shortage of very different churches, both black and white -- in Chicago.

Some say that he was trying to earn credibility on the ghetto streets, to facilitate his work as a community activist or for his political career. We may never know why.

But now that Barack Obama is running for a presidential nomination, he is doing so on a radically different basis, as a post-racial candidate uniquely prepared to bring us all together.

Yet the past continues to follow him, despite his attempts to bury it and the mainstream media's attempts to ignore it or apologize for it.

Shelby Steele depicts Barack Obama as a man without real convictions, "an iconic figure who neglected to become himself."

Senator Obama has been at his best as an icon, able with his command of words to meet other people's psychic needs, including a need to dispel white guilt by supporting his candidacy.

But President of the United States, in a time of national danger, under a looming threat of nuclear terrorism? No.

Townhall.com::Obama's Speech::By Thomas Sowell

LOL, Thanks, Johnny K.

It is a long way to November. Hopefully we can keep ourselves from getting too deep in the mud for a little while longer. Ah, politics...

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To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society. -Theodore Roosevelt