Brilliant Speech - Obama For Liberal Court Justice!

George Friedman chimes in with some cogent analysis of what led the Fed to propose the merge of Bear Stearns into JP Morgan and what it means. (See 1 below.)


I have received a variety of comments regarding Shelby Steele's article in today's Wall Street Journal which I posted in my previous memo. They tend to be sympathetic to Sen. Obama and I share their views up to a point.

I was in the gym when Obama delivered his address and have not heard it. I hope to do so later today if it is replayed as I hope it will be. My wife heard it and was impressed.

Granted, Steele cannot get inside Obama's head but he does provide some thought provoking food for thought. I was not part of the older generation that enslaved so many of our nation's citizens. I also feel no responsibility. In fact I have always favored equal opportunity for all. I simply want everyone who comes to our blessed land, to do so legally and then enjoy the same benefits and opportunities and eat out of the same lunch pail as long as everyone recognizes there is no free lunch. I expect everyone to act responsibly and, recognizing they will not, to be fairly judged when they go astray. For those who fail to measure up to society's demands and laws I believe their period of incarceration should be devoted to training so upon their release they too have a better chance of becoming self-sustaining and better citizens and not become a recidivism statistic.

Thus, I disagree with welfare as we came to know it and have strong reservations about affirmative action though I understand full well the emotional rationale for its initiation. I believe political correct thinking has been disastrous, unwise and counterproductive. Lastly, I believe we have cheated our future progeny by spending beyond our means, lowering educational standards, tolerating anti-social behavior and becoming overly materialistic. We have lost touch with our roots and what made us a great and unique nation. We will continue paying a heavy price in the form of a lowered standard of living for our profligacy and unless we get serious the cost will mount as the government is required to meet its moral commitments to an aging populace.

When it comes to Sen. Obama, I believe he is intelligent, articulate and caring. However, I reject his solutions, to the extent that he has fleshed any out, and still will hold his inexperienced feet to the fire. What I fear, is that we are so distraught over the failures of the Iraq War, concerned about falling home prices, and the stock market, that we are possibly dropping our guard in terms of making reasoned decisions about who, among the three presidential candidates, will best serve our nation's needs. Fortunately the election is not tomorrow.

That Sen. Obama is willing to address the tragic consequences of race discrimination and the price our nation has and still pays because of it should not be dismissed lightly but neither should we act out of misplaced guilt and give him a pass. I look forward to hearing or reading his speech sometime later in the day.


Critical articles regarding Obama.(See 2, 3 and 4 below.)

I have just read Obama's brilliant speech and it is a brilliant and speech. It left me convinced were I president, I would appoint him to The Supreme Court as one of the more liberal members . What it did not do was convince me he should be my president for several reasons:

a) He mentions we need to talk about the issues he finds important and I concur. But he offers no solutions and granted this was not the speech for that.

b) When he does offer solutions, and they have been few and far between, he comes at them as a Socialist with, I believe, little understanding of economics and a view that expanded government programs and more intrusions are the way. Understandably since he went to Harvard. He acknowledges that solving our nation's problems is an ongoing and uncompleted task and are a nation that has proven it can change. I simply have a hard time believing his changes, beyond rhetoric, are the right prescription. The same goes for Sen. Clinton because politically they think as two peas in a pod

c) Finally Obama makes a biblical reference to "we are our brother's keeper." I am my brother's keeper only to the extent that I want my "brother" to enjoy the same rights, opportunities and freedoms I and everyone else has and I feel compelled to do what I can to see that laws do not abridge them and they are enforced fairly. But, to keep my brother also suggests I have control over his life, his actions and that means accepting the Liberal's concept of intruding government beyond where I would go.

I am conservative in my views and try to live a life of moderation and within my means always stop short of what I could do or have, so as not to overextend. I try to calculate the upside because I know there is always a downside and a future price to pay. Perhaps I am heartless because I accept the fact that there will always be a bottom if there is a top and thus, my goal for our nation is simply to see that we remain a fluid and unrestrictive society so people can change places if they put forth the effort.

This is why I am concerned about Obama's union connections and reject his more maudlin comments about his reasons for unemployment etc. Many of our problems are because because we lowered our standards and fooled ourselves into believing we can get by without paying the cost of admission in an increasingly competitive world.

For students, this means taking tough courses, studying, not cheating, behaving in school and staying off drugs.

For workers, it means doing their utmost to make the best product or render the best service and getting a fair price for their efforts.

For corporate executives, it means being honest in their dealings with employees and making intelligent decisions that will perpetuate the organization.

What we have embraced is, all too often, the reverse - "When All Else Fails Lower Your Standards." I attribute this to our increasing belief in Socialism as the answer and our increasing unwillingness to allow markets to operate less encumbered. That is not to say if they were, there would not be abuses and skewed results that need correcting but that is why we have criminal laws, civil penalties and I fear saying it but Congress. People are people and abuses occur accordingly.

I helped raise five kids with tough love and I made many parental mistakes along the way but all are now married, productive, three raising good families and all are contributing members to our society. Government has become a far too indulgent and intrusive father.

Again a brilliant speech and I would love to see Obama on The Supreme Court as one of the more liberal members, because, in the final analysis, it remains the most powerful of the three branches when it comes to bringing about change. The problem is far too many rendered decisions have been based on fuzzy concepts tied to social engineering and not the intent of our forefathers who drafted our Constitution and who were brilliant and mostly self-made.

Segregated schools were unlawful, immoral, a blight on our nation's history and destructive to all citizens - some obviously more than others.. It was horrendously costly in economic and social terms and we have paid many times over for this sin and are still doing so. That said, busing was not the best way to handle the matter and we are now paying for that mistake because far too many of our schools have become re-segregated and the education our children receive in public schools is excessively abominable. Choice is one improvement, breaking the stranglehold of unions would be another and elevating education as a national priority would be another and it can be achieved without the heavy hand of government requirements, wasteful administrative garbage and the like.

The question is whether we care about doing so and throwing more money at the problem is simply putting a clean shirt on a dirty body. I do not believe Obama would approach solving our education problem as I would, again because he is far too liberal in his thinking. That pretty much goes for what I believe would be his approach to others problems as well and this gives me pause and, again, the same for Sen. Clinton. So I am left with McCain and my reservations about him as well. An interesting dilemma and I am sure I am not unique for the experience. (Text of Obama's brilliant speech. See 5 below.)

Dick


1) Geopolitical Diary Graphic

The Federal Reserve System tried to reshuffle the financial deck late March 16. For the next 24 hours, the global financial markets tried to figure out where the Fed’s action left the system. At the end of the day, they were not happy. But at the same time, they were not suicidal. That represents a victory for the Fed.

It is important to understand what the Fed was trying to achieve. In essence, its goal was not complicated. It was trying to manage the collapse of a financial institution — Bear Stearns — such that it did not default on its clients, individual and institutional. The threat it faced was of bank failures, in which depositors would lose their savings. If Bear Stearns had been unable to carry out financial transactions on Monday morning because of a lack of cash, its clients effectively would have found their assets frozen. And that would have touched off a ripple through the financial system that might have caused a series of uncontrollable failures.

The Fed did two things to prevent this scenario. First, it engineered a buyout of Bear Stearns by JPMorgan Chase at $2 a share. The Fed was not at all interested in protecting investors in Bear Stearns, who were nearly wiped out. Nor were they interested in protecting Bear Stearns employees. The Fed was interested in having JPMorgan Chase — a huge bank with a strong balance sheet — in effect guarantee the liquidity of Bear Stearn’s account-holding clients, thus avoiding the threat of falling dominoes.

The Fed’s second move was to redefine the rules of access to low-cost, short-term financing from the Federal Reserve. Historically, such financing has been confined to banks. It has now been extended to brokerage houses. By doing this, the major brokerage houses can access money from the Fed for 90 days, up from 30. That sets the stage for an orderly consolidation of the system, in which major banks with strong balance sheets use short-term Fed money to acquire weak and failing institutions without having to pull liquidity out of the system by using their own money or trying to borrow money from banks. In effect, the Fed created a situation where other institutions in the same condition as Bear Stearns can be merged into healthier entities without the need for this weekend’s urgent scramble.

JPMorgan Chase got a pretty good deal out of the move. For less than a quarter billion dollars, it acquired the marketing strength and customer base of a major financial institution, something that could well be valued in the tens of billions once things settle down. We are not clear on what Bear Stearns’ debt structure was but its Manhattan building alone is said to be worth three times what Bear Stearns went for. Obviously there are a lot of liabilities traveling with Bear Stearns, but we suspect that given Fed financing, JPMorgan Chase was not engaging in charitable activity. Indeed, there already are rumors that Bear Stearns’ shareholders might resist the takeover. But by the time that happens, if it even does, the deal will be well down the road. In the meantime, its clients were served Monday morning.

The Fed is working to create a system for dealing with weak institutions that neither allows defaults to clients nor sucks liquidity out of the system as acquiring institutions raise money to make acquisitions. Just as the Fed effectively brokered this acquisition, we expect it to be brokering other ones in the coming days and weeks using its new tools. Alternatively, now that it is known that the Fed will protect clients as it would protect bank depositors, there will be fewer failures than otherwise. This is because the kind of pressure that built up on Bear Stearns last week may not happen again.

Those old enough to remember companies like Bache remember similar actions before. What the Fed has done is in fact not unprecedented. What is new is that it now regards brokerage houses and equity markets as being on par with banks and money markets. That is important, but not earthshaking.

The S&P 500 has shed about 20 percent of its value since October 2007. In 2000-2001, the S&P fell about 40 percent before beginning to recover — and the 2001 recession was not a trans-formative event. It was just another recession and a mild one at that. Obviously, the markets may continue to fall. But we are still struck by how well they are holding up in the face of remarkably negative sentiment and a sense of intense crisis.

We do not predict the market, but we do regard the equity markets as a guide to future behavior of the economy. Given negative sentiment and the failure to fall more than it has, it seems to us that the markets are saying that the liquidity crisis is being managed. For all the apparent gloom, the markets are doing surprisingly well. Between this liquidity crisis, soaring oil prices and the falling dollar, the equity markets are in fact remarkably calm. But that is a leading indicator and it might change on a dime.

We continue to believe that petrodollars and Chinese dollars are stabilizing the American system. And the Fed now has reduced the threat of structural failure of financial institutions. As we have said, a recession is to be expected after six years of expansion. But the latest actions by the Fed strike that while a recession may be likely, it won't be catastrophic.

2) Obama's Big Speech
By Thomas Lifson

It does not speak well of his campaign's crisis management skills that Barack Obama has taken five days to wheel out his heavy artillery and give a speech today on Jeremiah Wright, Jr. and "the larger issue of race in this campaign" at a venue called the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

Given the opportunity to carefully write and rehearse the delivery of a speech, Obama's verbal presentation skills shine. But talking on his feet, in a press conference or television interview, he is less persuasive.

Rather than get on top of the story, he has unconvincingly argued that he wasn't there when the bad things were said, that Wright is like a crazy uncle, and that we have to remember that the scars of the past have not healed for the older generation. Worst of all, his language has been transparently evasive, making him look like a man with something to hide.

Obama implicitly promised racial healing, which is exactly what makes his two decades of cleaving to the teachings of a raging racial hater so shocking. The visceral impact of hate-filled pastoral rants and congregants clapping as they leap to their feet utterly contradicts the promise of bringing us together.

How can Obama get out of his hole?

Given his skills and the amount of time he has available to prepare, he may well be able to sell a formula that will reassure enough of his supporters to avoid a collapse of his campaign. Shoring up the base is usually the first priority for any politician in crisis. That should get him into the convention with a solid lead among ordinary delegates. At that point, the fear of angering his constituency will probably ensure he gets the nomination.

Reaching the skeptics will be much, much harder. Thanks to the very qualities that made Pastor Wright a superstar preacher able to build a mega-church, the memory of his rants will linger in the minds of those who have seen his television performance. He is an arresting presence on screen, full of holy spirit, or anger, or whatever word comes to the beholder's mind.

So Obama needs to create a sense that this unpleasantness is best put aside. As much as possible, he needs to stigmatize those who would continue the conversation about Wright. In an interview with Gwen Ifill of Newshour on PBS, Obama gave a preview of this element of the formula:

I'm not sure that we benefit from continuing to perpetuate the anger and the bitterness that I think, at this point, serves to divide rather than bring us together. And that's part of what this campaign has been about, is to say, let's acknowledge a difficult history, but let's move forward in a practical way to get things done.

There are many other things he can say to help end the focus on his inconvenient spiritual guide.

The Arsenal of arguments


The generational appeal
From his Gwen Ifill interview:

...you have also cast this as a generational distinction, the sorts of things that Reverend Wright said being the baggage of fiercely intelligent African-American men of his generation


This blends into

Healing old wounds
Wright's anger came from pain and a pain that he will, with the help of my fellow Americans, heal. Out this regrettable controversy, drummed up by opponents anxious to caricature a man in pain, can come healing, if only good Americans align themselves with hope.


Obama would be best advised to give the following wide berth. But perhaps an allusion might slip in:

Guilt
Jeremiah Wright suffered as a black man. We owe him a generosity of spirit


It would be much better to inspire with the positive side:

The appeal to America's generosity
When it comes to forgiveness, Americans are soft touches. Jesse Jackson's speech at the DNC after the Hymietown comments ("God is not finished with me, yet")


Depending on whether or not Obama chooses to pursue the uncle analogy, he could opt to favor this phrase he has recently used for himself:

The "Bonehead move" excuse
He could hold Wright up as someone who "made a bonehead" move
Remember, this excuse bought Obama some time with the Rezko scandal, his other looming trouble. He could even say that America is right to be upset about some of the things Pastor Wright said, and can aver that he seeks to help members of that generation to get over their pain. That would be an example of he can unite Americans.


Trinity United Church of Christ

There is a good chance Obama will cite loyalty to his fellow congregants.

The Community ties appeal
He stayed out of loyalty to friends; he was close to his fellow parishioners, who acted as an extended family, and who he felt enriched his life and the lives of his family. America will like that line. Every community has members who may be controversial


If he wants to really lay this on thick, he can return to:

The family analogy
As Wright was like an uncle to him, TUCC is like a family, and you don't leave an extended family.


this neatly segues into:

Let the healing process work
Just as the church has turned a new page with a new Pastor replacing Wright, so should we. We all must move forward and work together to heal the wounds of a bitter history.


Black Liberation Theology

The candidate should steer clear of black liberation theology, the doctrine embraced by Pastor Wright and TUCC. He does not want the specifics examined. But he might add, as he has in the past, that Pastor Wright comes out of a theology embraced at prestigious seminaries, where the pastor has lectured.

Victimology

The candidate must be very, very careful, but it is possible to inject a bit of victimization into his appeal. He gave a preview of this to Gwen Ifill:

I think it would have been naive for me to think that I could run and end up with quasi-frontrunner status in a presidential election, as potentially the first African-American president, and that issues of race wouldn't come up any more than Senator Clinton could expect that gender issues might not come up.


Michael Crowley of The New Republic's blog The Stump lays out an even more compelling case for Obama to make, that Wright:

...lays bare a very grim truth: That even middle-class black American culture is more angry and alienated than most whites understand, and that our country is simply not yet at the point where even an ostensibly post-racial black candidate can escape that dynamic entirely. (Indeed not only was Wright perfectly acceptable to Obama and his Chicago circle, but it seems likely that it would have been difficult for Obama to separate himself from the preacher had he wanted to, lest he be accused of not being an "authentic" member of the south side black community.)


Soaring rhetoric

It is much safer to turn positive. Almost certainly toward the end, the candidate will seek to inspire. There are almost limitless possibilities for a man of his experience and skills. This is where he expects to close the sale with those amenable to rekindling the flames of hope. A brief sample of the types of appeals we might hear:

* Let's get beyond this so American can fulfill the grand dream promised by our founding fathers come true-a promise that our great Presidents Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy worked towards and paid with their lives


* We can fulfill a promise that Martin Luther King -- along with many white of goodwill --worked to fulfill. That spirit still lives, still beats in the better part of our hearts, the more noble of our emotions, our better angels.


* We need to release this energy and build upon the greatness that our forefathers have given us. Just as mistakes were made by other leaders but did not prevent their own good works, so we should accept his request for forgiveness and give him another chance. America loves second chance stories.


The Downside

While a substantial majority of Americans earnestly seek to go beyond race, and would love nothing better than to elect a black president who could be of and for all Americans, many are also terrified of the attitudes they saw on the tape from TUCCC. The congregants as much as the minister don't sound or look at all like people who want to get beyond race.

Decent Americans have been trying for decades to eradicate racism. The scales are falling from their eyes as they see that some inner city preachers like Wright have been playing this game behind closed doors and fomenting racial hate.

Tarnishing the Obama halo

The overwhelmingly positive press coverage enjoyed by Obama is coming back to haunt himhalo effect and his party. He was never adequately vetted by the media on Wright, even though American Thinker and a few other outlets have been warning about him for a year now. Lulled into a false sense of security, Obama failed to realize the explosive nature of the recordings when they were aired by Brian Ross on Good Morning America five long days ago.

When a politician claims to be all about a certain value, and then turns out to have been lying about it, Americans can be merciless. Ask Eliot Spitzer. In the same way that a prostitution ring-busting prosecutor can't frequent ladies of the night, a dealer in racial balm should steer away from racial grievance-mongers in his spiritual guides.

Obama is also now fully exposed as a phony, one way or the other. Michael Medved put it succinctly:

Hey, Barack---it's either one or the other: either you were lying when you talked about your deep, soul-changing involvement in Trinity United Church of Christ, or else you're lying when you say you never had any idea (until last week) about the crazy and offensive and sickening contents of the pastor's diatribes from the pulpit.


The sad thing about halos is they don't come with Teflon® coating. Barack Obama could use that trademarked fluoropolymer's most famous property, slipperiness. Instead, he may find that his embrace of Pastor Wright over the last two decades is not biodegradable.

3) Is Obama Trying to Bamboozle Us with His Wright Denials?
By Kyle-Anne Shiver

"Some of my fellow clergy don't appreciate what we're about. They feel we're too radical."
Jeremiah Wright to Barack Obama (Very first face-to-face meeting -- Chicago, mid 1980's*)


I thought I might have entered one of those political twilight-zone moments when I read this statement made by Obama Saturday, in response to reports on his pastor of twenty years:

"I noticed over the last several weeks that the forces of division have started to raise their ugly heads again. And I'm not here to cast blame or point fingers because everybody, you know, senses that there's been this shift," Obama said.


Begging the Senator's pardon, but this condescending, schoolmarm admonition seems to me like the proverbial kettle calling the pot black.

Obama continues:

"If all I knew were those statements I saw on television, I would be shocked.


Giving the Senator the benefit of the doubt here, I don't think he means to imply with this statement that he knew an awful lot more, including the statements played in the videos in the press. Maybe that's not what he meant to say, but that's sure what it sounds like to me.

The fact of the matter remains that we journalists were not the ones sitting in Reverend Wright's pews for 20 years, listening to his racially divisive, anti-American rhetoric.

Oh, my. Obama actually contends he wasn't either.

So, what did he think Jeremiah Wright meant when he said that fellow African-American clergymen found him too radical for their understanding of the Christian faith?


What did Obama know and when did he know it?

Wright to Obama, in the same very first face-to-face meeting:

"Cops don't check my bank account when they pull me over and make me spread-eagle against the car. These mis-educated brothers, like that sociologist at the University of Chicago, talking about ‘the declining significance of race.' Now what country is he living in?" (Dreams from My Father; Barack Obama; p. 283)


Now, let's think just a minute here. Barack Obama has steadily maintained that he knew absolutely nothing about Reverend Wright's proclivity for mixing racial hatred and anti-American politics into his sermons at Trinity United Church of Christ.

Yet, incredibly, right there on page 293 of Obama's Dreams from My Father, when Barack is describing the wondrous event of his own conversion in Wright's church, he lets on otherwise.

"...Reverend Wright spoke of Sharpsville and Hiroshima, the callousness of policy makers in the White House and in the State House."


We know now Reverend Wright's opinion of Hiroshima and the Country who dropped that atomic bomb.

And apparently, Michelle Obama holds the same entirely negative opinion of America as her pastor.

Yet, Barack Obama maintains that even though his pastor and his wife have no pride in America, he himself has remained above all that division and strife, incredulously, because he never even knew about it.

And candidate Obama wants us to let him have a conversation with the Iranian president so they can work out something other than a big-bang solution for world peace.

I don't know about you, dear reader, but I'm getting a bit queasy at the thought of Barack Obama's tendency to know nothing about nothing when it comes to people and problems right under his nose. If he genuinely was not on to the racism of his own pastor, the guy who was like an "uncle" to him, how will he be able to see through the lying hypocrisy of IslamoFascists.

If even the heralded celebratory award his Church magazine gave to Louis Farrakhan, the infamous black Muslim and Nazi admirer, didn't open the eyes of Mr. Gullible, what on earth would?

When I visited Trinity United Church of Christ, I perused the titles in the church bookstore. Well, all of James H. Cone's books on black liberation theology were on prominent display, as were books by Malcolm X and black panther luminaries and Nation of Islam greats.

Does Obama also expect us to believe that he never knew there were books glorifying violence and black supremacy racism in his own church's bookstore, even though he was a prominent member there for more than 20 years.

Jeremiah Wright is the one who created this racially divisive can of worms.

We journalists merely opened it in the interest of providing voters with as much information about a candidate for president as could be found.

And no journalist has put any words in Jeremiah Wright's mouth.

Will the real racists please stand up.

Actually the very first citizens to inject racism into this presidential campaign were not white. Nor were they journalists or reporters.

They were black leaders who questioned whether Barack Obama's bi-racial genetic inheritance made him legitimately "black enough" to run as a black man.

And once he started winning, they claimed him, and stood front and center to rally African-American voters to one of their own. Many switched alliances mid-stream from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama.

That's fine. I didn't see a soul objecting.

But Obama has run his entire campaign on the idea that he possesses superior judgment in lieu of the experience he lacks. Then he has the temerity to label it racially divisive when citizens rightfully question his judgment.

It seems a terrific diversionary ploy for Obama to insinuate that reporters covering actual, factual, inflammatory, egregiously divisive remarks made by his pastor of twenty years somehow renders the reporters as the sowers of division. But I think this sort of tactic would only work with kindergartners.

And American voters are a whole lot wiser than that.

It doesn't take a genius to recognize the rants of Rev. Jeremiah Wright as racist, inflammatory and divisive.

Is Senator Obama suggesting that "we all come together" by burying the truth of his pastor's racism?

This would seem to represent a rather chilling call to censorship, albeit delivered in a soothing, kind-mannered voice.

The most salient point in all of this has been pointedly ignored by Senator Obama. The Senator has made repeated assertions that he was never, for one moment, aware of Wright's proclivity for anti-American, racially divisive rhetoric or opinions. Yet, every one of the sermons being aired by websites and networks appear on the church's own DVD of Wright's Greatest Sermons. Obama completely wiggles past, in his denials of knowledge, the fact that his own church members chose these very sermons as the best oratory of their pastor in his last year of service to the congregation.

Senator Obama's insistence that he shouldn't be held accountable for a 20-year, close association with Jeremiah Wright because he was never actually there to hear a single snippet of anti-American, racist diatribe is beginning to look a lot like all those "present" votes in the Illinois legislature.

He seems to be saying he wants to have his cake and eat it too.

And all I can say is if Barack Obama can't stand the heat of personal scrutiny, he really ought to do us all a favor and get out of the kitchen.

4) The New Jimmy Carter
By Bruce Walker

Thirty two years ago a Democrat politician with very little experience "transcended" politics as usual and was lifted on waves of good will to the White House. It seems to be happening again. Jimmy Carter is unknown to most young Americans. Most Americans do not remember how Carter magically seemed to appear on the American political scene. Perhaps a history lesson is in order.

"I'll never lie to you," Carter famously told American voters in 1976. His smile was all embracing. Carter seldom got angry. He talked about his evangelical Christian faith often. Carter promised change and hope. He told us that the mean and cynical government that we had come to expect from Washington was a thing of the past.

Millions of Americans, many of them who had remained uninvolved in American politics, listened. They trusted Carter to be "different." His carefully crafted words led people to believe that Jimmy Carter was something very different from the typical sort of Democrat. Carter would try something new. He was an idealist who was not wedded to failed ideals of the past.

Then Carter won. It became painfully apparent that four years as Governor of Georgia was poor experience for the leader of the Free World. Carter supported on "human rights" grounds the overthrow of the Shah of Iran (our friend) and its replacement by the Islamic theocracy which still rules Iran to this day (our enemy.) He pursed domestic policies which called for privation instead of growth. Carter lied about the firing of U.S. Attorney David Marston, who had been investigating corrupt Pennsylvania Democrat congressmen.

When America faced a genuine crisis, the illegal capture of our embassy staff by the Iranian Islamic militants, Carter was utterly at a loss. He tried to talk to negotiate their release, but the regime with whom Carter tried to work with had no interest beyond utterly humiliating America.

Carter, after the Soviets assassinated our ambassador in Afghanistan and then invaded that nation, was "surprised" that Communism was aggressive and malignant. His response was to try to exert diplomatic pressure on the Soviets as well as trade sanctions. Jimmy Carter, well into the middle of his presidency, seriously seems to have considered that Marxist-Leninist regimes were somehow like another form of socialist democracy, that Moscow was no threat to America, and that the proliferation of virulently anti-American dictators around the globe was in our long term best interest.

All of this sounds very much like Barack Obama. Carter was "magic" because he was the first nominee from the Deep South, the first nominee who talked a great deal about his religion. Obama is "magic" because he is the first black candidate and because he speaks very well. Carter was all smiles and civility, just like Obama is all niceness and calm. Pointedly, neither man speaks about political philosophy much at all.

Yet Carter was obviously a stark Leftist. What was not shown in his brief presidency has been shown in his long ex-presidency. When has Carter ever had anything to say good about America? More pointedly, what American ex-president has been so viciously partisan in his comments? His contempt for every Republican president since him certainly belies the toothy smile and meek words of 1976. Jimmy Carter is a bitter, angry man - a man who hates his country and blames America for the problems of mankind.

Barack Obama seems cut of identical cloth. Carefully scripted, Obama quickly corrects statements which show how he truly feels. He rejects anti-Semitic, anti-American supporters only when nudged to do so. His wife "misstates" when she says that she has never been proud of America until now, but Michelle corrects the error only belatedly and without apparent concern for misinterpretation.

It certainly seems as if Obama feels that the problems of America have been her moral shortcomings, which is very much what Jimmy Carter thought. It seems as if Obama feels himself morally superior to those in politics today, much like Carter did thirty years ago. Obama, like Carter, invites Americans to trust him with the most beguiling claims of spiritual elevation. Obama, like Carter was an utter and complete Democrat partisan, although he promised to be just the opposite.

Jimmy Carter never tried to "govern from the center" or "seek bipartisanship." He could easily have passed tax cuts or defense spending increases. He did not want to. Barack Obama has never sought bipartisanship. He embraces Leftism completely. They are the same: Barack Obama is our next Jimmy Carter.

5) "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.

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 slave owners - 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.

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.

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

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 world view 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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 round table 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 round table 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.

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.

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.

Barack Obama is a Democratic Senator from Illinois and a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.