Today I endorse Barack Obama for president of the United States. I believe him to be a person of integrity, intelligence and genuine good will. I take him at his word that he wants to move the nation beyond its religious and racial divides and to return United States to that company of nations committed to human rights. I do not know if his earlier life experience is sufficient for the challenges of the presidency that lie ahead. I doubt we know this about any of the men or women we might select. It likely depends upon the serendipity of the events that cannot be foreseen.

Prominent Republic Endorses Obama

Reading this article is making me think about how I view race. I am neither white or black, and being an Asian, it feels a bit different. I think most of my friends forget or don't really care what I am. I was raised in a predominantly white city, albeit incredibly liberal at times, and go to a predominantly white school [even more white than my high school, which I thought was impossible]. I find it amusing that so many conservatives are commenting that America doesn't need to talk about race because we are past that and they thought Obama was too. It shows their complete ignorance of the issue at hand. Racism does still exist, although in different ways than forty years ago. Just because it is not longer discussed among polite company doesn't mean it's vanished. But the media made way too big a deal of the Wright comments, in my opinion. Many were out of line, but some held some truth. I guess most people were not aware of the Tuskagee Experiment, or a number of other state funded programs. Wright was wrong and paranoid in much of what he was saying in the videos floating around, but some have its grain of truth. [And the US funding state terrorisim is one of them, even if we wish we were the morally righteous of the world - one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter].

I feel like I view race as an outsider most of the time because it's not black and white for me. I stand inbetween this debate only because of words.

Now can we get onto the issues, please?

Also, it would be nice if more people knew that McCain might not know as much about foreign policy as he toots. His comment about Iran training Al-Quaida operatives; both are of different Islamic sects, and that does matter. McCain's Mistake

Bill Clinton: "I think it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country. And people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics." [source]

Funny how his wife's campaign likes to play around with the "other stuff" right now though. Making the campaign about the issues would be easy if both sides would agree to that.

I'm reading Hillary Clinton's book Living History right now and I deeply admire her strength and tenacity, but her campaign has been out of hand and line, especially for a primary. I think she would have made a good president, but right now it's just an unclassy, graceless fight to the bitter end with the numbers heavily, heavily on Obama's side and all the fight is doing is hurting chances for the general election.

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