1) You've made unifying the American public and putting our political divisions behind us one of the central themes of your campaign. Yet, National Journal ranked you as the single most liberal senator in 2007. So, which liberal beliefs of yours are you willing to give up for unity's sake?   None,  Unity does not mean every person thinks in exactly the same way.  I will unify the country behind important goals:  Economic recovery, health care, restoring Americas moral position in the world…. The point is that each person will bring what they have to the effort rather than simply tearing each other apart.----- Let's think about guns.  People who favor gun ownership realize that when guns are used in violent crimes it hurts their interests.  Guns don't kill, people do.  SO everybody has a vested interest in keeping guns out of the hands of people who would do harm.  With a common interest we can work together.

Again . . . VERY well written.

I have read these exact same comments from Abraham Lincoln before and I remember that I was horrified when I first read them twenty or so years ago. I will add that Lincoln was crafty in that he tailored his message to meet with the approval of his audience wherever he was.  He appeared to be enlightened and anti-slavery to anti-slavery audiences and he appeared to be indifferent or highly sympathetic to a pro-slavery position to pro-slavery audiences.  This was basically evidenced in his speech below.   SO . . . did Lincoln say what he felt that he needed to say for the purpose of freeing the slaves being willing to be two-faced as necessary in order to get himself elected President and further that objective??   Quite possibly.

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Lincoln was likely one of the lesser racists of his time but he was still very much a racist by today's standards as evidenced by his statements that you quote.

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I was NEVER raised to believe that racism was acceptable.  BUT . . . my aunts and uncles would occasionally make statementsreferring to blacks as "darkies" as well as other comments that would be considered horrific and inexcusable today.  They would also refer to blacks in disparaging ways that would NEVER be acceptable today in polite company.  Now to be fair, these same relatives are still alive today.  They are now in their late 80s and early 90s  and I have not heard any of them utter anything like this in the past 30 years.

They were likely much more open-minded regarding race than were their parents.  I KNOW that I am much more enlightened regarding race than they were and I am also sure that my kids are more enlightened than I am.  I remember that my older sister had a black boyfriend when she was in her 20s in the early 1970s and my parents were not pleased about this.  They weren't angry or anything but I would describe their reaction as mild shock and disappointment with my sister.   At the age of 12, I thought that it was a great thing.

I think that inter-racial marriage is wonderful and shows that this culture is moving beyond race. 

A lot of wonderful progress has been made over the past 50 years.
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Obviously, I disagree with you about having a Democratic President.

 I think that the best thing would be to adopt the ideal of MLK Jr that we should have a society where all people "would be judged by the content of their character and NOT the color of their skin".  This means that we should strive to have a colorblind society.  This is means that reverse racism is wrong because it is still racism.   Affirmative action is also wrong because it is also reverse racism.  This cheats blacks by telling them that they are inferior and can't make it in the world based on their own merits.   They can only make it because the white man rigs the game in their favor.  Then people tend to assume that blacks often get what they get because of a handout and not because of merit.   This is NOT fair and creates racial division and strife.  This cheats blacks out of the satisfaction of earning their own way in the world.  Blacks that I have talked with resent affirmative action.   They want the world to know that they earned their own way, fair and square.

It's time. 

Your defense of Obama was a fair amount more persuasive than was Obama's defense of himelf. 

I don't like Pat Robertson.  He is often very unecessarily and wrongly harsh.  He made some good points . . . BUT . . . his conclusion that black people should thank their lucky stars that they were enslaved in America for two centuries before they were then freed from slavery and then treated as sub-humans for another century leaves a lot to be desired.

 At best, Robertson handled a very sensitive issues with absolutely zero sensitivity.

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HOWEVER . . . honestly . . .  I do not buy your explanation that Rev Wright was taken out of context and is not necessarily an anti-Semitic racist.  He has clearly proven that he IS an anti-Semitic racisst.

How many videos of me would you need addressing an audience of thousands of people spewing racist hatred before you would conclude that I was a racist?  One video would be enough.  Many, many times just makes the proof that much more complete.  Even if 99.999% of the time I was not spewing racist hatred and was full of sweetnes and light, if I was spewing racist hatred 0.001% of the time, that would be enough to conclude that I was a racist.

 Therefore, there is a political problem for Obama that he stayed in that church for 20 years and has been raising his kids in the same church that gave a "Lifetime Acheivement Award" to Louis Farrakhan.  In giving this award, Rev Wright praised Farrakhan for a lifetime of telling the truth.  That is EXTREMELY disturbing.  The fact that Wright did his and said this proves that those sermons that were played again and again and again were not aberations which were taken out of context.  He actually believes this crap.    Wright also travelled to Libya to give this award to Farrakhan in the presence of Libya's Kdafi (sp?). 

This is also extremely disturbing.

Staying in this church for 20 years shows extremely poor judgement on the part of Obama.    He has not even begun to adequately explain this.  This has caused a 7 point swing from Obama up over Hillary by 2 points to Hillary up over Obama by 5 points.

BUT . . . there is another possibility.  It could be that Obama believed none of this crap but he joined one of the largest black churches in South Chicago purely for street cred - for political purposes.  This would be a far less disturbing answer . . . BUT . . .  it would portray Obama as a big fake which would cause him to likely lose even more support than the "pastor disaster".  This would also explain why Obama will not completely disassociate himself from Wright.  That alternative would cause an even larger problem.

 You know it is amazing.  Buchanon looks at the history of Blacks in America and he doesn't see anything wrong.  We took 600,000 blacks and turned them into 40 million freedom loving Christians.  It's all good.  Wright looks at America and sees nothing good… Stuck in 1955.  Both are wrong.  Obama said that explicitly.  Wright is wrong to see America as not changing… that doesn't mean it's all good.  America has not been the best country on earth for black folks… but that doesn't mean that America is essentially an immoral nation.

 America once believed in a genocidal manifest destiny.  We killed Indians as if they were so many buffalo.  We went to war with Mexico because American blood was shed on American soil.  Except that American soil was fifty miles south of the Mexican border.  That doesn't mean that the creation of empire in north America was evil. We escalated a war in Vietnam because of a lie.  We went to war in Iraq because of non-existent WMD.  That doesn't mean that America is the root of all that is bad in the world.

History is what it is.  America is what it is.  My country love it or leave it is not true patriotism.  My country right or wrong is not true patriotism.  It is important to speak the truth.

Rev Wright preached a sermon every week for 20 years.  Each sermon may have had 100 sentences.  52 weeks per year.  20 years.  How many sentences has he preached and how many sentences have you heard.  It doesn't count that you have heard the same sentence 50 times… like the Dean scream.  You have heard maybe five sentences… over and over and over and over again until it sounds like all 20,000 sentences.  But it isn't.

The sentences you have heard are evil, like the slavery was evil, like jim crow was evil, like calling a black man 2/3 human is evil.  But like all of that it isn't the whole story or even the most important part of the story.  Those five sentences may not be be truth, but truth is spoken in that church.

Certainly Wright is angry.  He was born in the same year as Emmit Till.  He saw the Freedom Riders.  He saw the strange fruit.  He saw innocent black men get convicted and executed while guilty white men laughed with the rigged juries.  He is angry and that anger is sin.  This is not an excuse, but a description.  I don't offer excuses for him any more than you would offer excuses for Jimmy Swaggart who still preaches today.  It is wrong for a sinner to be the head of a church, but of course he is not the only one.  What has he done?  Has he molested a child? Paid for prostitutes? Is he a homosexual who preaches hate for homosexuals from his pulpit.  Used the churches money to live a luxurious life style?  Taken drugs?

What has he DONE?

He has uttered a sentence:  God damn America.  He has called America The US of KKKA.  He has raged against his country.  And for republicans this is the ultimate sin… the ultimate stain… More serious than any of the sins of other preachers.  This stain cannot be exaggerated, it cannot be cleaned.  This sin cannot be forgiven.  This sin is contagious.  It spreads.  These five sentences are all that you need to know about the man.  A man who utters these sentences is evil.  He is a racist.  He hates.  He hates whites.  He hates America.   Any charitable work shrinks in insignificance to this stain.  This stain is on an entire church. The stain is on any person who hears the words and does not recoil.   This stain is on anyone who feels affection for Rev Wright.  This stain goes to the heart of all black churches, makes them similar to madrassas which teach and preach hatred.  This stain… these five sentences are all that is needed to make a man and a candidate radioactive.  Association with this stain makes a man unfit to hold public office.  

The reaction of republicans is politics at its worst.  The reaction of republicans is worse than the offense of Wright.  Remember what Ruffini said on Hugh Hewitt's blog?

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If they go further with this civility routine, they risk alienating conservatives in talk radio and the blogosphere who are doing the necessary work of defining Obama and rendering him just as radioactive with the base as Hillary…..

In this pursuit truth is irrelevant.  Educating the public is irrelevant.  Bringing the country together is undesired.  Just get an extra 1% and the rest of the country be damned… oh that's what Wright said isn't it….

Well, I haven't said it all and I haven't said it well enough, but what I have read and what I have heard from the right is wrong and it is sin.  They resurrect the past as if it is the present and fasely judge the whole by a part.  The people who categorically condemn Wright and his church ironically make the EXACT same mistake that Wright made.  They are guilty of EXACTLY the same sin.

 I am surprised, however than nearly no one seems to know this.