Who needs the elitist “conservatives” who have endorsed Obama?

Ultimately, these people chose culture ahead of political viewpoints.

Have you ever heard these people “talk” – do they sound like most Americans? No. Do they act or do things that most Americans do? No. They are book party, country club elitist who appreciate Harvard connections above the real world struggles of a place like Alaska – or even most counties of America.

How would I know this? Fortunately, or unfortunately, I grew up in one of the wealthiest places in America. I knew people like Christopher Buckley, Peggy Noonan and David Brooks. They believe that an obscure reference to literary figure from 200 years ago is more pertinent knowledge than knowing how to change oil in a car – which it is not.

I knew leftists like Barack Obama – and I knew kids from the ghetto. Obama was nothing like the ghetto kids. Actually, middle class kids often had more in common with ghetto kids than the elitists.

For these elitists, life is about cocktail presentations, country club functions and Woody Allen movies. Debating weird (and ultimately questionable) educational references is something these people love. 

Ask yourself this question: Are these elitists even like Henry Ford or Thomas Edison – no. Those people were practical can do people. 

These elitists know nothing about farming, construction, auto mechanics – and a whole host of everyday practical pieces of knowledge that make America function.

These people are frequently employed in areas where their value is questionable. Take for example liberal arts programs in universities. The internet has made much of their work no longer necessary – and their prejudiced and close-minded viewpoints are not good for much else.

So, why do they hate Sarah Palin? I doubt she knows literary references. She might not know much about a cotillion. Yet, she knows how to put food on the table (hunting) and how to heat a house and provide fuel for a car (oil production). Elitists usually know little if nothing about practical issues. Ultimately, these issues are much more important to understand governing than knowledge about French literature or modern architecture.   Policies have important effects on food production, energy issues and the like – not whether Frank Lloyd Wright is a great architect.

I never liked having these people on “the side” of conservatives. In fact, I found myself at odds with these people more than I agreed with them. I never liked their condescending tone – especially because it was based on superficial “knowledge.”

More often than not, these people just “parrot” other elitists’ opinions. Hence, Christopher Buckley quotes Oliver Wendell Holmes comments about FDR. 

Most regular people understand that these vapid comments have no real intellectual value.

This quote is taken from a description of Obama's first year of college, when he self-consciously cultivated an identity of angry rebelliousness, a phase he grows out of. Here's the fuller quote:

"To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society's stifling constraints. ... But this strategy alone couldn't provide the distance I wanted … After all, there were thousands of so-called campus radicals, most of them white and tenured and happily tolerated. No, it remained necessary to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names."

We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

It is especially important that Obama discuss slavery since his relatives held black slaves – and were not black slaves. He is in a good position here to lecture us white people.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

I appreciate this acknowledgment concerning his wife also being a descendant of slaveowners. Shouldn’t someone maybe be giving a speech like this not have this baggage? Isn’t this a little bit like Adolf Eichmann’s children lecturing about the Holocaust.

It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

Yeah – I am sure that most pastors, priests and rabbis use the “n” word in a sermon – claim that the U.S. government created AIDS and fixated on “white” people.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way

Ask yourself this question – would someone be able to finish high school without “getting” what Wright stands for? Basically, someone would have to be mentally retarded to not perceive what Wright sands for. By the way – it is great for you to expose your young daughters to this sick man.

But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

I am sure David Duke is a nice guy too – Hitler liked his dogs. I appreciate that Obama mentions HIV/AIDS since Wright claims that the U.S. Government created that disease to kill people of color like Rock Hudson, Liberace and Waylon Flowers.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”

I actually have been to black churches where there is no fixation on “whites” or the U.S. Government and they do not use the “n” word. Guess what – they really do not talk much about politics either. I have never seen any black preacher act the way Wright acts.

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

Yeah – great idea to encourage bigotry. Anyway, why don’t they go after Obama – his family actually held slaves – I guess that is because such hatred, while probably not positive, would have some basis in reality – kind of like Irish people who do not like English, or Jews who don’t like Germans. Why focus on “white people” – what did “white people” ever do to “black people.” Many "white people" have never been out of Europe.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

Wright is singularly the strongest influence on Obama – he is being pretty honest here.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

I suppose Obama would think that it would be racist for a white person to be afraid to go into a ghetto at night – but would he think that it would be racist for a 1960s black person to drive from New York to Alabama? Of course not, that is different – one type of person deserves to care about self-preservation – the other should be denied that fundamental right. By the way, didn’t Jesse Jackson say something just like Obama’s racist granny. Kudos to Obama for also exposing his grandmother as a racist – nice work.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

Great job! Now Geraldine Ferraro is a racist for stating a simple obvious point – Obama got where he was (being only a U.S. Senator for 3 ½ years and being a front-runner for President) because he was black. What percent of the black vote did Obama get again? What percent of the Democratic electorate is black in many states (sometimes as much as 50%). 

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

I agree, Wright should not be accountable for his actions – just like Michael Richards shouldn’t either – nor should Trent Lott – oops, I forgot “all people are equal, only some are more equal than others”

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

This particularly disgusts me. While my family was starving in the West of Ireland this jackass had relatives who had black slaves.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

So, are you going to accept some responsibility for this Mr. Obama? I certainly will not – my relatives were NOT slaveholders – neither were my wife’s – nor my child’s. In fact, many of them were not lucky enough to live in America during the 19^th Century.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.

More than anything, leftists like Wright are responsible for the gap. The Irish were persecuted for 800 years, at varying times lost half of its population to murder and starvation, lost their native tongue – but guess what – they make a lot more money than the English today. You know why? Hard work and persistence. 

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.

The Irish had it worse – for many, many more years.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

Is this supposed to be an explanation for why Obama’s father left him? How does Obama have any connection to this other than as a casual observer?

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

Keep feeling sorry for yourself, that’s the ticket. Why not study present day Sudan, Rwanda of the 1990s, Cambodia of the 1970s, Germany in 1945, Ukraine of the 1930s, Armenians in the Ottoman Empire from 1900 to 1920 and Ireland from 1600 to 1900?

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.

I had a great uncle murdered in a racial incident by blacks in the 1960s (when he was about 60 years old). Nobody brought me up to hate anyone or want to be racist – isn’t violence the worst form of racism?

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

Obama is lying here – and defaming blacks – better yet descendants of American slaves from West Africa (to which he has no connection).   Obama is being a bigot here. It would be like me (a non-Italian) claiming that all Italians are in the mob.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Obama is on to something here. But, should he be lecturing “us” on this point? Again, he is not a descendant of slaves or a product of Jim Crow America. Personally, I am beyond tired of people like Obama and Wright desecrating the memory of my ancestors who had real struggles – and had no black slaves.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

I suppose it is too much to ask for equal treatment and equal opportunity. After all, all of my family got goodies for being “white” – oops, I guess they did not. Yeah, but we did live down South – oops, I guess they did not. Yeah, but those who were here (who weren’t even American citizens yet) did fight for the Confederates – oops, that was the Union.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

No – we “whites” deserve equal treatment – that is non-negotiable. We also deserve not to be blamed for slavery – the Obamas need to accept their family responsibility for this evil – and apologize for trying to link any white person and his family to slavery.

This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

Not much of a stalemate. Ask the Duke Lacrosse players about the “stalemate.” Ask about any government job, admissions to college – mandatory government contracting. One group has an advantage – but merely stating the truth is “racist.”

But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

I don’t need a descendant of slaveowners to lecture me about how I need to work together with him – when he is insulting me for my skin color.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans — the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

Yes, Wright is quite the staid stogy conservative. He hardly ever uses the “n” word in his sermons. By the way, Wright has a lot more money than I have.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old — is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know — what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

Did it take Obama 20 years to figure this out? Is Obama retarded? It would take about a 2 minute discussion with Wright to know where he stands. He is not shy about his beliefs.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

I am trying to figure this out – is Obama claiming that any person with white skin needs to acknowledge the harm they have done to blacks? Didn’t Obama’s family have slaves – not mine.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

Also, we need to demand that our government stops inventing diseases like AIDS to kill “people of color.”

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But we are not allowed to. McCain is so lame that he was afraid of being called a racist for bringing this up. Obama is either profoundly stupid – or he is a radical bigot. I pick the latter.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

I would like my children to get treated the same as other children – no preferential treatment, no political correctness, no lecturing about the evils of white skin – no more excusing black on white crime.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

Here Obama is essentially saying that illegal immigration should be permitted – it is unreasonable to be concerned about the problems associated with that.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Obama couldn’t resist showing how whites are racist here.  Obama is the person who needs to lecture us about race – he is “The One.”

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”

“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

Look, I suppose this is a nice point – but I have had friends of all races and religions for more than 35 years (and I am not even 40 yet).

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

Unfortunately, most Americans consider slavery and the treatment of black Americans historically unique. As part of this, all “white people” are taught “white guilt” by the media and by schools. The fact is that while blacks were mistreated in this country, many other ethnicities suffered more horrible fates during that same era (say from 1600 to 1980). Even slavery itself is hardly unique.

It is simply a fact that North Africans (who admittedly are not “black”) enslaved perhaps millions of Europeans. The Irish were common victims of this practice. 

In one well known example, in 1631 the entire Irish village of Baltimore was captured and sold into slavery by African Barbary Pirates.

America does not have lots of Irish people simply because the Irish wanted a “better life” like other immigrants, many came to escape systematic starvation and murder. Ireland is a unique country in that the vast majority of Irish people do not live in Ireland – that is not true of the French, Swedes, Japanese or Germans.

Here is a easily understood example, Germany has a population roughly 15 times that of Ireland – yet the number of German Americans and Irish Americans is roughly similar.

Irish oppression began to take its most serious stake in the years of Cromwell rule – from 1641 to 1653. One historian Sir William Petty, estimated that more than half of all Irish died during that 12 year span. 

Some historians claim that about 600,000 died – which would have constituted perhaps 1/3+ of the Irish. 

Another historian claims that Ireland’s population decreased from as much as about 2,000,000 people down to about 850,000 – roughly a loss of perhaps 60%.

Putting this in perspective, historians estimate that at most about 1/3 of all Jews were killed by the Germans during WWII.

Unfortunately, nobody seems to care about what happened under Cromwell. However, when “whites” are universally charged with oppression it is an insult to the memory of these people who suffered.

Of course, Irish were also taken into slavery during that era – slavery that happened in the Colonies and the Caribbean.

Here are some of the estimates of that horrible situation.

A common estimate is that in excess of 50,000 Irish were transported to Barbados and Virginia from 1652 until 1659 – this meant that perhaps as many as 10% or all Irish were shipped to slavery.

First, many Irish were forcibly sent to the poorest part of Ireland for farming – the province of Connaught. These people paid a heavy price – a price that repeated itself 200 years later. Perhaps 50% of my ancestors are from that part of Ireland – so the story of suffering needs to be remembered and told by me to honor my ancestors memory.

The writer Sean O’Callaghan wrote a detailed referenced book called “To Hell or Barbados: the ethnic cleansing of Ireland” – the records and stories are what they are – and they should not be ignored or dismissed.

Here are some of the noteworthy examples:

Almost from the earliest days of the settlement of Barbados, the (Irish) indentured servants were treated as little more than slaves.

When captured, the Irish were branded (like animals) with the initials of the ship that would take them across the ocean.

The Irish being put on slave ships was described as being given tattered rags to wear, being flogged with rods and being branded like sheep on their skin and flesh – this was observed by a Roman Catholic Italian Cardinal, Cardinal Rinuccini, when he was in Ireland.

The general assumption is that they were treated exactly the same as African Slaves since in many cases they were sent on the same ships as those who took slaves from Africa. Upon arrival to Barbados, Irish slaves were again branded with their owner’s initials in either the forearm (women) or buttocks (men). The Irish worked usually under the whip of mixed race slaves in Barbados.

Black historian and editor of Ebony Lerone Bennett magazine wrote the following of the Irish slave trade:

They came, these Christian demi-slaves, the same way blacks came…there were striking similarities between the Irish slave trade and the black slave trade.

Even to this day there are a few descendants of Irish slaves that live on Barbados called red legs – some still remain in Jamaica as well.

Certainly, the Irish slave trade involved fewer people – but how was it different? It really was not. Also, keep in mind that it involved a high percent of the total number of Irish people.

Whenever people say that “white people” exploited the “black people” it is no better than spitting in the face of these people who suffered.

In England as recently as 40 years ago it was commonplace for people to have signs in their shops that said “No Irish, no blacks, no dogs.”

Due to systematic murder and discrimination, the Irish have largely lost their native language. All people of significant Irish ancestry owe it to our ancestors to try to learn some Irish and pass it on to your children.

On behalf of my Irish ancestors, I am not looking for reparations – nor do I wish to subject the English living today to similar treatment. Nevertheless, any University professor who engages in the willful omission of this history by accusing all “white people” as being guilty of racism should be permanently unemployed.

Obama has chosen to ally himself to many people who push for a “white guilt” agenda – which is why he does not deserve to be elevated to President. Obama does not have the excuse of “ignorance” – he went to Harvard Law School.

Obama also believes he has the right to lecture us about the racism of his “white grandmother” and Geraldine Ferraro. There is no question that Obama believes “white people” and “black people” should be governed by different standards and rules. Unfortunately, most Americans agree – which is precisely why no white politician would have any shot at the presidency if they attended a radical church for 20 years where the preacher commonly would attack America (God Damn America) and would make up historical points like the U.S. government created AIDS to kill “people of color.”

To Obama and his cohorts history does not matter – so if Mars had two different types of people – white and black-- if those people came to America the “black people” would be entitled to preferential treatment and the “white people” would need to be lectured about “white guilt.”

Government will mandate more racist diversity training; companies doing business with the government (almost any midsize or large business) will be mandated to have similar programs.

All federally funded educational institutions will have more mandated diversity training (focusing on all the evil deeds that “whites” have historically done).

We will have large scale immigration, and little if no immigration enforcement. The crime caused by these immigrants will not be able to be fought – money will not be available. People will not be able to protect themselves as more gun control policy will be mandated (maybe even mandatory gun control for states wanting federal funding). Handguns are about the only effective weapon against a violent burglar – a shotgun or a rifle is too large and cannot effectively be put in reach of a victim. A stronger and quicker perpetrator can more easily grab a pointed rifle than an handgun. Obama stated 12 years ago in a voters guide that he supported banning of handguns – there is no reason to think he will not continue this policy.

Because we will have no ability to control our borders, we will not be able to fight many forms of terrorism.

Gay marriage will be mandated by the U.S. Supreme Court – there is a high chance that Kennedy and Scalia will no longer be on the Court in an Obama second term.

Even though any open signs of Christianity will not be tolerated, we will cater to Muslims with public bathing facilities and prayer rooms (we already do that – this will simply increase).

Political racial prosecutions will increase. Innocent whites will be prosecuted (like the Duke lacrosse case) because it fits political correctness. The excuse will always come down to the Scottsboro boys and to Kill a Mockingbird – in other words – historical bad prosecutions justifies current bad prosecutions.  "Hatespeech" like many of my postings will be illegal.

Obama will likely not focus money on needed weapons in order to sort out terrorism and fight biological and nuclear devices.

We will have more energy dependence on foreign oil. Without drilling and refining, we will be more dependent.  We are not going to develop electric cars for universal purchase until at least 10 years from now.  I could see Obama mandating stricter rules for cars rendering many of them not being able to be licensed due to emissions or environmental reasons -- car pooling will in essence be mandatory.

We know that Obama will have many of these agendas – we know it from his books and his Wright relationship. 

After the Reverend Wright story broke in the Spring, Hillary Clinton’s candidacy was resurrected. In the last several states, she did better than Obama. As it turned out, it was too late.

McCain’s choice to not go after the Wright issue will cause him to lose the race. McCain, going along with the media, decided it was racist to expose Wright. Apparently, the basis for it being racist is that it is wrong to expose someone for saying things such as the U.S. government created aids to kill people of color, U.S. of KKK, constantly revile “whites” for “their” treatment of blacks in America the week after 9/11 constantly state at the pulpit God Da** America.

Why should this be off-limits. Those who claim that Obama only joined this church to be elected to public office have incorrect views of black churches – they are not “all the same” and they do not all focus on radical political agendas in church.

The Wright issue is the most important issue for me. Obama’s longest close relationship in his life is with Wright and his church. The relationship existed for 20 years, pre-dated his relationship with his wife and inspired him to write one of his books.

As much as I might also disagree with Jesse Jackson – I do not recall him ever acting the way Wright acted in his church. Apparently, the issue goes beyond Wright as the guests who speak in that church also say and do similar things (Father Fleiger).

Obama said that Wright was as close to him as a family member. Obama was indignant that people had the nerve to bring up the issue – and basically he equated Wright to his grandmother. His grandmother was harassed by a black man who was a panhandler. How was her view racist? Self preservation is the most basic feeling – it is why many whites do not go to ghetto areas – especially at night. Likewise, blacks were rightfully in fear of traveling down South in a car in the 1960s. Jesse Jackson admitted his own fear of black youths in urban areas. There is a crime problem, and the statistics show that it often can be a black on white crimes.

Obama and Wright are simply just bigoted. Bigots cannot accept facts or the truth – they believe what they believe irrespective of the truth. 

Obama himself admits in his books that he considers himself “black” rather than white – when he is equally both. He stated that he would not date or marry a white woman – again that is bigoted.

No truth matters to either Wright or Obama. Even if you have no connection to any racism, simply by having white skin you are guilty. The rationale of that point is that all whites benefit from the “racist” system. Try telling that to a poor white person, or a white person in prison who is victimized – or try telling that to the Duke Lacrosse team.

The rationale to any clear examples of racial mistreatment of whites is, in essence, the idea that because bad things happened to blacks at the hands of whites in the past, it excuses blacks for mistreatment of whites today. With that mindset, when will violence ever end? Doesn’t that justify future mistreatment of blacks – simply cite the Duke lacrosse incidence or Tawana Brawley or O.J. Simpson or Colin Ferguson and that should be a “get out of jail free” card.

Let’s be honest here. View history for what it is – it is replete with examples of murder of ethnic groups, bombings and rape. Slavery in the Americas only happened with the cooperation with blacks in Africa who “captured” the slaves. The oldest and youngest and sickest were largely exempt from slavery – for the simple reason that such a person would likely not survive a sailing from Africa to America.

During the age of slavery, thousands of Irish were shipped much further – to Australia – with no desire to keep those on the ship alive. In the Ukraine of the 1930s, Stalin’s policies (which were excused by none other than the New York Times) caused perhaps millions to starve – there were even documented incidents of cannibalism. We forget so easily that the Japanese performed scientific operations on American POWs – and few lived through their capture.

What about the people who lived in Rwanda in the 1990s – or Sudan now.

America’s immigration possibly saved the lives of more than 1,000,000 Irish people – who otherwise would have died of starvation and disease.

No country is perfect – America’s treatment of Abu Ghareb prisoners was certainly worse than segregated water fountains. 

Today, lives are regularly ruined due to political correctness in prosecutions and on college campuses. The Duke lacrosse prosecutions are what they are – but they are hardly unique. People like Obama and Wright not only push for that different treatment – when in power they mandate it.

Separate treatment is mandatory already in the law – government hiring, contracting, scholarships is what it is. The policies have been in place for about 40 years.

College campuses mandate lecturing like the idea that all whites are racists, and non-whites cannot be racist. 

It is not racist to merely want to be treated the same as others. Stressing that two wrongs make a right is racist. Focusing on what people who “look like me” did in the past is evil – and it is insulting to the memory of my family – and the family of people who tolerate this bigotry. 

Obama’s bigotry is what it is – he feels that he has the right to tell “whites” about their evil history even though he himself is the descendant of white slaveholders (most of us “whites” are not).

No white candidate who attended any radical church where a preacher acted the way Wright did would have any chance – and their political career would be over.

Clearly, it would be easy to describe me as being obsessed with this issue – but it is because of my legitimate fears and my reasonable desire to not be subjected to government lecturing about my criminal racist ancestry.

For pretty good reasons, the Ayers “connections” to Obama are falling on deaf ears. Ayers was not like a family member to Obama. Ayers did not inspire one of Obama’s books. Obama did not regularly see Ayers every week (church services).

The multitude of Wright sermons and press conferences are what they are. Apparently, Wright is off limits to McCain because it is somehow “racist” to criticize Wright – but it is alright to attack Ayers. Actually, McCain and others who feel a compulsion to have a “hands off” attitude about Wright are racists.

What is the rationale for Wright to not be responsible for his statements? I agree that both Ayers and Wright would have equal significance if Obama regularly went to two churches – one where Ayers was the pastor, the other where Wright was. Also, if Obama had written 3 books rather than just two, with the third being inspired by Ayers it could be claimed that they had equal influence.

Obama called Wright as close as a “family member” – someone he can no more disown than his “white grandmother.”

Obama cannot blame his family for his Wright relationship. For example, if Wright happened to be a minister in a particular uncommon branch of Christianity that Obama was raised in, Obama could sort of have an excuse (and really only “sort of”) that he was loyal to the church he was raised in, and that Wright had good parts to him as well as bad parts.

Wright brought Obama to “religion” (if you can call Wright’s church a religion). I mention “religion” because Wright’s church hosts speakers of all different kinds of backgrounds (like Catholic Priests like Father Fleiger or Muslims like Louis Farrakhan). Apparently, the only connection that matters in this "church" is a committment to a radical political agenda.

I do believe Obama when he states that he was an agnostic/atheist before he found religion in Wright’s church. Despite the fact that Obama may have had a Muslim father and stepfather, and apparently was registered as a Muslim in the Catholic school he attended in Indonesia – there is little evidence that he has ever had Muslim beliefs.

To me, it says a lot when a particular person brings you to a particular religion – and if you refer to that person as close to your only living ancestor (who took years out of her life actually providing companionship and support to you) by definition that person is among the few closest people in your life.

Remember what Wright’s sermons have focused on – God da*n America, U.S. of KKK, Hillary ain’t never been called a ni****, America’s chickens are coming home to roost -- right after 9/11, Bill (Clinton) was doing the nasty (with gesturing) in the Whitehouse.” 

Of course, the main focus of the Wright and Obama connection is the fixation on the evils of "whites" and race and racism. Has everyone forgotten that Obama implied that both his grandmother and Geraldine Ferraro are racists. Bill Clinton also got tagged as a racist. Aside from criticizing Obama, how exactly are these people racists?

Obama and Wright are also fixated on the bad things about America. America was never about wholesale genocide like has happened in many countries that we now consider civilized (Britain, Germany and Japan are some examples). 

American Indians lost lands, and died in fighting, but America never had a plan to kill all American Indians. Jefferson wanted whites and Indians to intermarry. Many of the early Indian Chiefs of the 18^th Century were actually descended from white pioneer fathers and grandfathers. In the 1920s, we had an American Indian Vice President (Charles Curtis) and an American Indian as perhaps America’s favorite entertainer (Will Rogers).  American Indians could play in the major leagues decades before blacks could.

There is no doublt that blacks had a raw deal in this country for a long time. The mistreatment of talented people like Paul Robeson and Jack Johnson are but two examples.

Nevertheless, black slaves were treated as valuable property – not as disposable beings destined for predetermined death. 

How soon do we forget the deliberate killings of Jews during WWII and of Gypsies only 65 years ago? After WWII, perhaps millions of innocent Germans were killed by the Soviet military – many of these were children and the elderly.

How about Armenians wholesale murder by the Ottomans? That was less than 100 years ago. During the 17 century most Irish were killed by deliberate genocidal means.  In the 19th Century most Irish either died of starvation or fled their native land -- its population today still is less that it was 170 years ago (I doubt any other country can say that).

In the 1990s, Rwanda had ethnic genocide. Today in Sudan we have the same thing.

Today, we do have a form of institutionalized racism against blacks that is harmful and ought to be stopped.

Obama himself singled out Clarence Thomas as being unqualified for the Supreme Court. Thomas was a very good college student at a very good college (Holy Cross). His credentials make Biden look like a joke – and may be better than Obama’s (since he conceals his college transcripts).

Those who single out Thomas as being unqualified ignore that he was head of a large agency for a decade and had been a judge – many other Supreme Court candidates had little or no judicial experience and were not stellar academics.

The assumption that blacks cannot academically excel without “help” is racist – and it is a slur to the memory of people like Paul Robeson who succeeded despite incredible odds.

Excusing black dysfunctional behavior is similarly racist. Inherently, doing that implies that blacks are inferior – that “they” cannot help themselves. Jewish acts of violence are not excused, Irish acts of violence are not excused – but people explain away black conduct. It is similar to the idea that blacks will benefit from “midnight basketball” – the assumption is that blacks have no discipline and would rather play basketball than engage in some other non-destructive behavior.

Many “black studies” professors are given free reign to attack “whites” for evils – when such attacks are no different than KKK members attributing all blacks with certain characteristics.  Allowing such blatant racists on a college campus hurts all blacks -- it implies that all blacks are bigoted people who possess no interest other than obsession over discrimination.

History tells us what slavery was (and is). Slavery was practiced all over the world (as genocide similarly was and is practiced).

Would we tolerate a Jewish youth attacking a random white non-Jew because of Hitler? Perhaps that white kid might not even be of German ancestry.

Many “whites” (like me, and many others) had most of their family come to the U.S. after we had slavery. Even when America had slavery, as a percentage of Americans few whites had slaves (some American Indians had them too).

About a year or so ago, when watching Coundown with Keith Olbermann (who I did admire for his legitimate attacks on GWB for mismanagement of the Iraq war) I heard him make the blanket statement that Rush Limbaugh was a racist for saying that Obama’s family had slaves, and were not slaves.

I knew only a little bit about Obama then – but I did know that his father was an African from Kenya – and Kenya is not where American slaves came from. As it turned out, Obama also has two separate white slaveholding family members. So, Rush was a racist here because he stated the truth.

Here is the problem. Stating the truth about Wright’s strong connection to Obama is racist. As long as we cannot simply state the truth about people – our society will have severe problems.

The manifestation of those problems can result in violence against whites (because of slavery). Also, politically correct acts of official government oppression are encouraged – just read about the Duke Lacrosse case sometime.

Unlike most white Americans, Obama should possibly feel guilty for his white slaveholding ancestors. While Obama had multiple white slaveholding ancestors in the mid 19^th Century, about half of my ancestors were literally starving in the poorest part of Ireland – the West Coast.  Oops, I suppose that factual statement is probably "racist."

Obama possesses such a degree of white hatred that he ignores the good that his “white grandmother” did for him – and compared his ranting former preacher, Jeremiah Wright. Like Obama, it is pretty clear that Wright possesses significant European blood – his skin is as light as many “white” people’s skin.  Once again, merely stating this point is "racist."

What basis does Wright and Obama have to ridicule America? Has America participated in a directed act of genocide (American Ind? Did America starve a majority of its citizens? Did we ever have mass executions?

While John Lewis points to the “atmosphere” that caused four in the mid-1960s black girls to die in a church bombing – how does that compare with the 1972 mass shootings of Irish in Derry for non-violent protests? 14 died in that action – brought about by the British government – not rogue actors like those in Birmingham.

Was Jim Crow worse than WWII concentration camps? Was it worse than the Japanese POW camps?

Was it worse to be a slave in America than to be in the Ukraine in the 1930s? Was it worse being a slave than being in Ireland under the reign of Cromwell (well, actually some of these people were sold into Slavery in the Americas – but most died via mass killings).

The hostility and lies (and exaggerations) that pass for history on television and schools is shameful. The guilt that it engenders is as shameful as urinating on the graves of my (and many others) ancestors.

Obama’s world view is what it is. It is the same view as Jeremiah Wright’s. Otherwise, Obama simply would have attended another church the first time he heard a sermon. Wright’s sermons are basically all the same – white people did this, white people did that, the U.S. government created AIDS to kill blacks, God Da** America! The US of KKK.  History is ignored, and a slap of a black person is the equivalent of an execution someone white.

Despite the fact that the Klan killed many Catholic whites including Priests and tried to invade and take over the Notre Dame Campus – all of us whites are to blame for the Klan.

Wright and Obama are bigots – perhaps because of their own white blood – perhaps because Hitler may have been part Jewish – whatever the reason – such beliefs should disqualify a candidate.  We need to move away from this fixation -- it is a false reality.  Also, clearly there is a racial problem with targeted violence against whites in cities and in prisons -- the numbers are what they are.  But these acts are excused -- or explained away with comments like "you shouldn't have gone in that bad neighborhood" or "serves you right for getting in trouble leading to prison."  What on earth has triggered these bigoted beliefs?

Keep in mind, this mindset possessed by Obama and his cohorts have successfully tagged both Bill Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro as “racists.” In the mass media, those attacks have largely stuck.  Of course, simply stating a fact has become "racist."

What is the real danger of Obama? Mid-level appointees. Obama will appoint perhaps thousands of people in positions of power with viewpoints which mirror Ayers and Wright. Nobody pays much attention to these appointees, but they carry lots of individual power.  They determine who is prosecuted, what companies get sued for "discrimination," what government contracting quotas ought to be, who gets promoted in government, what numbers of "minority" hires a company must have to do business with the government, the "racial sensitivity training" that people must go through, what beliefs are tolerated in school, working for government or doing business with government.

Under Obama, we will be subject to more racist lies about “white” history. Do not be surprised if hate speech (of course only certain types) will be a prosecutable offense. 

Another example would be racially motivated prosecutions like the one that happened at Duke University. No evidence is needed – lives can easily be ruined.  However, if it fits some politically correct paradigm -- prosecute first -- forget the consequences.  The Agenda is what matters, not the truth.  According to these politically correct people "people must pay" based upon what "they" look like.  It matters not what historical connection one has (or does not have) to slavery -- if it did Obama would be attacked for his slaveholding ancestors.  Apparently, the connection that matters is that "someone looks like a slaveholder."

Under Obama, more strict racial quotas will be put in effect, and public education will mandate more volatile hatred for America and the evil “white people” who started America.

At this point, it is now quite clear that McCain will not win. This is his fault – nobody else is to blame. McCain took Wright and Obama’s church off the table – and the comments about Obama's “racist” grandma. The Ayers connection is nowhere near as strong as Wright. Ultimately, it will not work.

Other likely policies will include firm quotas in education and in contracting (they are pretty firm already). Also, being very supportive of public prayer for Muslims in public schools and government buildings – but all Christian accommodations would be barred.

Don’t count on being able to keep your guns. Obama will likely use some “militia group” as an excuse to go after all “assault weapons” and handguns. Obama stated in a questionnaire that he believed handguns should be banned in 1996 – I would be surprised if he personally felt differently from this.

Sure, if crime happens you can call the police – they certainly will have the coroner come to pick up your dead body and perhaps do a “work up” of the crime scene.

No Presidential Candidate even comes close to the radical nature of Obama. While Bill Clinton may have been a leftwing youth – he was protesting against the Vietnam War (which did have a lot of negatives) and protesting for civil rights (which were needed). Many of the ideas that Clinton had in the 1960s are pretty mainstream today.

Obama grew up in the late 1970s and early 1980s when Civil Rights had already been adopted (and quotas were already in place) – we no longer had a draft. Yet, Obama associated with left-wing students who supported the Soviet Union over the United States. I remember these people quite well – they would deny the Soviet atrocities under Stalin, deny the East block Soviet controlled empire and would say that we should have let North Korea win the Korean war (you could make the case that war saved more people than almost any war other than WWII in American history – just think how a unified Communist Korea would be – starving, no political rights, no innovation and economic success).

Obama has chosen his associates. His church is the longest affiliation – 20 years. It is also the most direct connection – Obama was not nearly as close with Ayers as he was with Wright. Remember, Wright was like a family member who he wrote a book that was inspired by him. But since McCain is “afraid” of the race issue, McCain will only raise the Ayers issue.

It is ironic, but it is clear that ignoring Wright is a matter of race – and the emphasis on Ayers is the same thing -- fear because of Wright's race.

Unfortunately, it is probably too late for McCain – the media is calling it desperate and (ironically enough) racist.

This idea is often at the core of “hate crimes” legislation where the only people allegedly who can be bigoted are whites. It matters not if a non-white seriously injures a white person – no additional concern is noted.

The truth for Obama, and his cohorts is irrelevant. That is, it does not matter that Obama had white family members who held slaves and has no connection to those blacks in America who are descended from slaves.

It is incredible that Obama is treated with any expertise on issues involving race since he has such a biased built in viewpoint.

History makes no difference to the politically correct bureaucrats who will form the foundation of an Obama administration. Whites must be punished since they allegedly benefit from a racist system and because they “look like” what slave holders used to look like.

No similar unfair treatment is routinely offered by Jews against the millions of German Americans, or the English by the Irish or Turks by Armenians.

Another sickening thing about Obama and the politically correct peoples who run much of academia and the Democratic party is that they feel free to distort and lie about history. Thus, someone whose father came to the United States from Kenya in the 1960s to study for a doctorate, should be given some preferential treatment in applying for a school above and beyond the poor kid from West Virginia.

It has become completely acceptable on college campuses, in popular magazines and on televisions for whites to be “lectured” with the paraphrased attacks of things like “you put us in slavery” you tried to commit genocide against us.

Michelle Obama is less careful to disguise her true feelings about “whites” and Americans. An interesting read is her college thesis.   Of course, without even fully reading the entire thesis, it is easy to understand a basic point – that some blacks (about 25 years ago) did not really feel part of the Princeton community.

Without quickly asserting that it is due to “racism” it probably is best to just understand who the rich people at Princeton are – basically “snobs.” If you do not have the same vacation plans, a pedigree from a top-notch private high school, and do not speak the same way these people speak – you simply are not going to be fully accepted. Not only blacks face that kind of challenge, poor whites and working class people in general all face that fact.

When I was younger, I grew up in a very wealthy town with parents who moved between economic middle class and economic lower middle class. With some people, I really did not fit in – I did not regularly go to the Caribbean or Europe – nor did my parents belong to a country club.

When these people “know” what you are really like, they sometimes will make attacks on those less wealthy people. Those people will simply not usually “make it” in the elite circles. Still receiving a Princeton degree, no matter what your skin color, is a certain door opener.

Michelle Obama had the added negative matter to deal with in that she was assumed to have lower test scores than white students. Of course, if you get special treatment to gain admission (but maybe a good friend with much greater academics does not) some of those admitted on merits will resent your special treatment.