The real issues - such as Clinton-era banking regulations that forced institutions to lend to folks who couldn’t afford it and are now defaulting? Or the price of gas that is high because Asian demand is up, the usual suspects are restricting supply, and congress is consistently blocking attempts to open new fields to exploration or build new refineries. Or enacting Clinton-era alternate fuels legislation which doesn’t affect the price of gasoline but does raise the price of food and reduce the mileage of most cars.

Yeah - the real issues that, upon analysis, leads one to the conclusion that both Obama and Clinton are proposing no solutions to the problem but are doing really well at promoting the politics of avarice.

And that is an issue of character.

All in all, it’s a pretty good open letter, and I get and mostly agree with your basic points, but I sure hope that the above quote contains a bit of dramatic hyperbole.

If the ravings of some lunatic stranger are actually creating that level of angst about your relationship with your kids, I’d suggest you look up a family counselor, pronto.

As a parent and/or “primary care giver” (what a clumsy circumlocution) of black and mixed-race kids (no white ones, but they have a white dad, so that’s something) aged 26 down to 13, I’ve run into these crackpot views here and there for years, and they’re not strange to my kids, either. But they were and are always met with my kids’ succinct, dismissive, and frequently-used 3 word comment on most things “racial:”

“That’s just stupid.”

And that’s about as deep as our “conversation about race” has to get, beyond the healthy and goofy banter siblings always share. I mean, why talk it, when you live it?

(And I really hope you’re not actually trying to figure out just now what to tell your seven-year-old about his older siblings.)

I’m guessing, and hoping, that your family has disposed of these issues long ago, and that your relationship with your kids is far more secure than that snippet makes it sound.

If not, Rev. Wright’s lunacy and Barack Obama’s prevarication are the least of your problems.

It might not matter to you, but stop telling me that I’m stupid for believing its important to me. I think you’ll find a majority of Americans disagree with you, and if the shoe were on the other foot with a Republican, he’d have been long ago hounded out of the race.

I’ll bet the Dems WISH that could happen in this case. Obama is over as a viable candidate, count on it. Lesser gaffes than this have sunk his predecessors.

Thanks for bringing up the IMPORTANT stuff B Smith!!!!

(That’s sarcasm if you aren’t bright enough to catch it).

I’m not immune to the criticism that America is a racist country. I don’t like being thought of that way, I’m not that way, and I truly believe I never have treated anyone differently on account of their race, and here was a guy who genuinely seemed to have transcended race, who had rejected the main impediment to a black man being elected: the perception that he harbored great resentment against white people and he would rectify those resentments when in office. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton made no secret of this agenda. That makes them, at least, more honest. I was more than ready to take the guy’s word at face value. I was HAPPY to.

But Obama hasn’t transcended race at all. Right now, and on through this election, and no matter who wins and forever after, he has severely damaged race relations in this country.

Personally, I thought we’d made progress. Call me naive or stupid, I had no idea there were black preachers who held such animosity toward whites, and congregations who would whoop and hollar approval for such animosity. And I never knew such a cynical, devious, calculating man as Obama could rise so fast and come so far with no one finding out the pernicious lies and hate to which he and his wife surely ascribed and were teaching their young daughters, week after week, ensuring the hate would continue through the next generation.

While we stupid, unseeing white people thought things were improving and tensions and prejudices were easing on both sides. Ok, now I know we were wrong. I don’t know how to fix it, or what I’ve personally done wrong, but there is still a boiling pool of racial hatred out there.

I feel like there is a great mass of people in this country to hate my guts because I’m white and nothing will ever change their minds, and there is a gulf between us that nothing I can do can ever change it, and with the way things are going, what will ever break the cycle? If they are teaching their kids that white people invented AIDS to kill black people, how can they ever look at a white face and smile back? How can a member of that church, or any such, not see an evil monster in every white person? How many black people attend a church that teaches as Rev. Wright’s does?

Judging by the cheers at the press conference, there are more than a few. I wonder just how many? All of them? I don’t know, I really don’t.

What the heck is going on? I don’t even know this country, I guess, just like Obama didn’t know his pastor.

I’m angry, I’m hurt, yes, and I’m resentful. I doubt I’m alone. And there’s nothing he can say, no speech he can make that can fix that or make it go away. And I’m plenty pissed off about it, and I shudder than had he pulled it off for a few more months he might have fooled everyone until it was too late.