I want to quote a great mind and political genius as far as this Wright mess goes:

Yeah, about time for me to get a little drink of water. Figure this stuff is safe to drink? Huh? Actually I don't care if it's safe or not, I drink it anyway. You know why? Cause I'm an American and I expect a little cancer in my food and water. That's right, I'm a loyal American and I'm not happy unless I've let government and industry poison me a little bit every day. Let me have a few hundred thousand carcinogens here.

Ahh, a little cancer never hurt anybody. Everybody needs a little cancer I think. It's good for you. Keeps you on you're toes.

- George Carlin

Now, what is the point of this quote, you may ask? Do I think that Wright is a cancer? No. Is his rhetoric a cancer? No, that's not either. Then surely, the deleterous effect he apparently is having on Obama's candidacy? Nope, that's not it either.

Then what is the point? What is the 'cancer' I speak of when I quote the great George Carlin? Simple. The cancer is the 800-lb. Gorilla in the room that the political elites, the media, and the more willfully ignorant of us continue to ignore. The ugly past we have, the ugly present we often endorse, and the ugly future this administration is sending us toward with its warmongering, toadyism, and belligerent defiance of common sense. Wright is no cancer, and he's no danger.

Say what you will of Wright's demeanor, his rhetoric, his style, his unapologetic nature. The one thing he's doing is something that very few people are willing to do, and even fewer are given any sort of audience for: exposing problems.

I don't care if you think he needs to be less "bombastic", as he is often described, often by himself in reference to all the coverage he's gotten. I don't care if you think he's outrageous. I've listened to the sermons, and the recent appearances in question, and found precious little that I found terribly ugly, racist, or un-American. He is doing something that we need to have done every so often: He's forcing us to drink the water, and reminding us of the cancer in there.

Even if he was outrageous and inflammatory, I am personally tired of being coddled and lied to in soft tones. I want truth, no matter how painful it is. Even if I'm angry now, it's better for me in the long run than if I consume the soothing tones of liars and politicians.

The less we know of some of the ugliness that's genuinely out there, the less protected we can be from it. Ignorance is not strength, no matter how some might want to run by the Orwell playbook of 1984.

This is a discussion that needs to be had, yes, not for the reasons that McCain, the GOP, Hillary, the media, or even Obama might want. This is a discussion we need to have because we NEED to be made uncomfortable. We need to know what's wrong out there, and if it takes a firebrand to be made a target of sound bites and outrage, so be it.

Am I the only one who saw the speech, saw the Q&A, and came away with the idea that Wright in no way insulted Obama by calling him a 'politician'? Again, going off on his earlier thing about 'different doesn't mean deficient', his example was that Obama has a job. As a politician, he has constituents and people he needs to please and speak to in certain ways. Same so, Wright is a preacher. He has his own constituents he has to speak to in a way. Difference is that with Obama, he has a deadline, and maybe two, for the job he has. The nomination/convention, and the general election if things go right. Everything he says is couched in that frame, good or bad.

Wright is accountable to his god and clergy, and come election time, his role won't change no matter what, where Obama's very well may depending on how things go.

It wasn't a jab at Obama, but more so saying 'Look...I'm a preacher, not a politician. If you want to parse my words like you would a political leader's, you're doing the wrong damn job'.

Again, from what I saw of Wright, I saw some uncomfortable truths, some common sense, and some religious fire that while I may not endorse it, find nothing wrong in it to condemn. I don't see the wild-eyed Wright that everyone in the media has created. I see a hatchet job, a mythical beast based vaguely on reality in order to cast Obama as a villain in the right-wing fantasy the media is so eagerly and obsessively creating.

Even giving Reid the benefit of the doubt, Lieberman has shown himself to be essentially a one-issue voter. His attachment to the war is priority number one, as seen by his repeated insistences that the Democrats will endanger the whole country by pushing against this war. This, from a man who many leading Democrats broke their vow to support the Dem. Nominee in '06 to support

'Diversity' in op-eds is like 'bipartisanship' in Congress.

They're both all about the myths of the stifling liberal hegemony and the need to 'balance it out'.

The problem here is that, in calling for this study, Ferrero then exposes herself as not terribly objective in calling for it by saying that the real issues of this campaign are sexism and REVERSE racism. She's already made up her mind as to what the real issues are, and the study she wants done is likely meant to only bolster it, no matter what the study ACTUALLY ends up saying.

And like it's been noted, the group she wants to do the study doesn't seem terribly objective either.

Ferrero's already decided she's a victim and Clinton's a victim.