Real Deal, the difference is that as a Democrat I do not expect Republicans to represent many of my positions. I do expect that in a Democrat. Why would a Democratic candidate stand up for Democrats if he/she knows the sheep will still vote for them while the candidate caters to the right?

How can someone running for the President of the United States use such racial stereotypes while addressing the youth of America. Is it actually true that most African American young men want to be basketball players and rappers? I thought that was a racial stereotype? So it's only true depending on who says it? If I was a mother of a son in that audience I would be outraged. Does he refer to all male children as "brothers"? Regardless of their race. I am undecided about who I will vote for. But this makes me very nervous about voting for someone as racist as he appears to be in this speech.

I came to America in 1984 with almost nothing.
Today, all my 5 children have been graduated from college. I have a House & 4 door apartment.
Do you want to know how I did it?
IT'S HARD WORK & a little bit of common sense.
Do you want to credit Obama for saying this? This all in the open since the beginning of the world.
I should be running for president myself.

rogerSM234, what do you know about Senator Obama's church. The news media shows a few snippets over a 30 year period and uninformed people are in a uproar. Are you familiar with culture of black churches. Oftentimes, the social gospel is preached. My pastor is a great man whom I respect. However, I do not agree with everything that he utters.
Does McCain go to church? Has he ever been baptized? Research that!

Undecided, please tell me what is racist about relating to a group of misguided youth. These kids need real leadership and role models. Think about it -if they are not educated and do not go to work what will they do. How will their uneducated circumstance affect you? And it will affect you. Obama was trying to give these kids hope through tough love.

Up123, All you have to do is read the churh's past bulletins and you will see that they consistently contain the same type of racist and anti-American verbage that is contained in Rev. Wright's "snippets" which proves that Obama must have been aware of where his Pastor was comming from and now is trying to say he knew nothing about it.

cattway, sometimes, it is not what is said, but who said it. Hopefully, Obama will have a positive impact and these youth will rely on an education and not a basketball.

From wake up America:
http://mpinkeyes.wordpress.com/2008/05/09/barack-obamas-church-bulletins-contain-controvercial-content/
By now everybody has heard the infamous “sermons” from Barack Obama’s spiritual mentor and pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Barack Obama stood by his pastor when the video clips first hit the airwaves, but as the controversy grew and Reverend Wright became a serious detriment to the Obama campaign Obama was forced to denounce his former reverend.

Obama has maintained that he had never, ever heard Wright make such statements in the TWENTY YEARS he attended Wright’s church. Apparently we are to believe that the only time Reverend Wright made controversial statements was coincidentally times where Barack Obama just happened to miss church. It wasn’t until Reverend Wright decided that he liked his new found fifteen minutes of fame and decided to turn it into an hour that Obama found it politically exponential to denounce Wright’s statements as divisive and destructive. He claims that the man he heard utter those words during his magical mystery media tour was not the same man that he had grown to know over the years.

However, we are now beginning to hear about church bulletins from Obama’s church that also preach the same type of hate as late as last year. I suppose we are to believe Obama just happened to not read these bulletins either.

Articles published in the Trinity United Church of Christ bulletin in 2007 carried controversial comments written by people other than Jeremiah Wright. Those comments included the claim that Israel worked with South Africa to build an “ethnic bomb” that would kill blacks and Arabs, that the Pentagon was training Latin Americans to be terrorists, and that the TV networks are run by right-wing racists.

This is the type of hate that Barack Obama and his wife took his young girls to listen to on a weekly basis. How is that for judgement from the man who is running on his judgement because he claims he would not have voted for war with Iraq? This shows a lack of judgement to me.

When interviewed about his denouncement of Reverend Wright, Obama claimed that he wasn’t committing to Wright by joining the church, rather the church itself.

“I think that the American people understand that when I joined Trinity United Church of Christ, I was committing not to Pastor Wright. I was committing to a church and I was committing to Christ. And it is a wonderful church.”

Now it appears as if the church itself harbors the same hateful and anti-American ideology as Reverend Wright. It will be interesting to see now Barack Obama tries to distance himself from this, if he does at all, however Obama’s campaign refused to comment on these new revelations (pardon the pun.)

You can read more in this article.

And Terry, you agree with everything that is in your church's bulletin.
What do the bullentins say? I have friends who are members of the United Church of Christ. Quite frankly, they are some of the kindest, God fearing, and compassionate people I know.
Leaving a church is a major decision.

Who has NEVER made a controversial statement?

We are all human!

Get real!

Real Deal,

Obama has changed his position on Iraq because even he knows that it would be just plain stupid to pull defeat out of the jaws of victory now that the US is winning the war in Iraq. As to high gas and food prices, Obama is on the record for being against drilling for more oil, building new refineries and nuclear power plants. In fact Obama has stated that he is just fine with the high price of gas. One of Obama's main campaign contributers is the biofuel industry and of course the global warming fear mongers that would like us all to go back to the dark ages. So if you want no or negative growth, a lower standard of living, high gas prices and food prices, I guess Obama is your guy.

Real Deal,

If my church bulletin contained racist, anti-American and anti-semitic sentiments I would immediatly leave the church. By the way, would you be making excuses for McCain if McCain had belonged to a church for twenty years whose pastor preached anti-black sermons and whose bulletins contained a lot of racists sentiments against blacks. I think not

Mary, you are right Obama is my guy. But please do not distort the facts, Obama's POSITION ON THE WAR HAS NOT CHANGED. HIS MISSION IS TO END THE WAR! And the ultimate timetable will be dictated by the commanders on the ground. This is NOT a change.

Off-shore oil drilling will NOT bring any oil for another 7 to 10 years and it will ruin our beaches. Besides the US cannot drill enough oil off the coasts to lower cost. The Chinese hold the "mighty" dollar.

Now, Mary, if you like the present economic conditions, McSame is your guy.

Can you fill up your tank?
Can you pay your mortgage?
Can you send your kids to college?
Can you pay all of your bills?
Can you take a vacation?
How is the ozone?
How is crime in your city?
Do you know anyone who has been killed in this senseless war?

Terry, you have made my point. Does McCain belong to a church? What is his faith?????

Real deal,
I don't believe Obama is demonstrating "tough love".McCain or Hilary Clinton would never in a million years use this type of "tough love" on this same audience. The leader of our country should not change the truth he speaks according to the audience he is speaking to. It is racist to assume that the young men in the audience want to be basketball players and rappers simply because they are African American. It is racist to call them "brothers" unless he use the term "brothers" when is he talking to all young men, regardless of their race. He can encourage them without using racist stereotypes.

It is amazing for me the comments. Everyone speaking negative about Obama obviously have not lived in the USA the last 8 years. I work for the largest Defense Contractor in the World as an engineer and let me tell you folks. Most of the people I work with don't won't 4 or 8 more years of Bush Politics and Republican irresponsibility. I am traditionally a republican but I am not stupid. Look at the corruption of the Bush Administration and how they have controlled their agenda. You want more of that? Granted Democrats are not perfect but we absolutely need to send a message to the Republican Party and change the agenda. The US Government is always.. let me be clear ALWAYS going to be BIG, LARGE, etc. The biggest difference between the Republicans and the Democrats is this. The Rupublicans have made this the United States of Corporate American and the Democrats want to put it back to where it is the United States of AMERICANS. It is the government's role to provide a stable economy and allow the economy to run in such a way as to afford everyone equal opportunities. Corporations have such influence in Government that it is not possible without big government changes. The government has to take control of health care and such or the Corporations will continue to run the economy and the american way of life into the ground. You talk about taxes and defend the Republican Party and the Bush Administration. You must be insane. It is a proven fact that TRADITIONALLY REPUBLICANS RAISE TAXES ON THE MIDDLE CLASS AND SCREW THE MIDDLE CLASS AND CATER TO THE RICH AND TRADITIONALLY DEMOCRATES TAKE MONEY FROM THE RICH CORPORATIONS BY TAXING THEM APPROPRIATELY AND NOT THE MIDDLE CLASS. Only a moron does not know that. If you look at this country and its state you should realize this is serious. If we do not do something about global warming there is not going to be any gas, oil or anything else. The Republican party wants to scare the people into believing that drilling oil is the answer and the way out of our problems and that is complete bull crap. Any logical person knows that if the government proves is taking serious to go alternative that alone will send a message to the oil maching to reduce their prices of oil. If we cater to drilling more that will just make the oil machine keep prices higher because they know it will take 10 years for it to affect supply. Changing course completely to alternative will send them a message that their days of supplying oil to us is going to end soon. THINK ABOUT IT

Real Deal,

Oil engineers, that is the experts, are saying that they can get oil out of the ground in as little as two years, not ten as Obama is telling you. Once the speculators know the US is serious about drilling for new oil they will start selling short and the prices will start to come down. Again, Obama is against this because he has told us that he is just fine with the high price of gas. So it is not surprising he could care less about doing what he can to lower prices by drilling for more oil and is trying to pull the wool over your eyes by telling you it will take 10 years to get the oil when all the experts are saying it will take as little as two years.

As to all of the issues you have noted, I could better pay for all of the above if my taxes were lower. Obama wants to raise taxes accross the board so Obama will make my life much worse, not better and make it harder for me to pay for all of my expenses, if not impossible. Fact is if Obama gets elected and recinds President Bush's tax cuts the taxes for and average familiy of four earning $50,000 will go up by $2500. When you add in higher payroll, taxes, corporate taxes, dividend taxes and income taxes,etc as Obama is proposing, that will mean higher tasxes for all and just not those earning $250, 000. For example, if I sell my home, the taxes on any profit I make will go higher. The taxes on my dividends will also go up and when my employers taxes go up, they might just lower my number of hours,thus my pay, or just plain lay me off. Not a pretty picture but that is what Obama has in store for us if he gets elected. If that is what you want, than, wow take a breath and think about it a little more and maybe you will come to your senses, I hope.

As to Iraq, Obama has flipped flopped so many times on Iraq that I know it is hard to tell where he stands at any given moment. But as to here and now, Obama has changed his position and will keep troops in Iraq as he knows that pulling them out now in the face of a victory is just plain stupid and would turn Iraq over to Iran and Al Qaeda and with the oil fields now in production, with the help of the US, it would be doubly stupid to withdraw now and Obama knows it. If you are correct and Obama will go ahead and withdraw from Iraq as he has said he would, than I really question not only his judgement, but his sanity.

so the candidate of hope and change tells kids not to hope for their dream, and that they are not good at what they love and that will not change??

what's really amusing about all of this is that when bill cosby talks to black youth across the country telling them to be more family oriented, to stay in school, get away from gangs, et cetera, the black community calls him an 'uncle tom' and calls him out of touch.

now the obamassiah says many of the same things and the drive-by's are crooning over him and he's got the black vote locked up??

seems both of these men are saying the same thing any intelligent leadership has said for years about the black community, but only this guy is allowed??

great he's decided to reach out and speak the truth to the african american community which he has largely ignored up until father's day. i would like to hear more about his proposals though.

Steve, Hello, the government is not for the people, where have you been if you think that? the old Soviet Union perhaps? The government is composed of a bunch of faceless, self serving burecrats who get their money by force of law from the hard working people, and than sit on their high horse telling everyone how to live their lives. Just remember Obama has already told us in plain english that
"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," Obama said.

"That's not leadership. That's not going to happen," he added.

As to corporate America being so bad, who built the home you live in, who grew the food you eat, who built the cars you drive, who made the clothes you wear who manufactured all the electronic toys you have, your flat screen tvs, your cell phones, you ipods, who manufactured the drugs that you count on to keep you healthy or save your life???? I can assure you it was not anyone in the government that has built or manufactured anything of value, All the government does is take take take and spend the money on a lot of useless government programs or earmarks for their favored program, like the bridge to nowhere in Alaska or the underground transit system in Boston.

If you want a lot of useless government programs, corrupt politicians who direct the tax payers money to people like Rezco and want some government worker running your life, than I guess Obama is your guy.