"..and the courts have required that some districts in some states be drawn.."

'Re-drawn' may be a more accurate description. And thanks for the update.

Maureen, I mean no malice. Just curious, because if you aren't an American, it just shows that everybody 'over there' isn't taken with Barack.

Back to the subject at hand. I don't think Obama was playing the race card (maybe we need an updated definition). We can talk about this for the next ten days, but the bottom line is he should stop saying that and the "..and you know he's Black.." statement, no matter how he frames it.

how often do we have to explain to your kind of guys or gals - the 'ugly Whites you are talking about might just hate themselves so much, that they have to attack a White Man (Obama) and all the 'ugly Blacks', who think Obama is not Black enough are just victims of a mistaken identity. If logic would apply -as a white or as a black you couldn't be 'racist' against a 'white and black person!

You are making my point for me (without meaning to, I'm sure). Do you really imagine that people will vote for Obama because they feel sorry for him? If his "tolerance" of outrage on the part of his subordinates helped him at all in the primaries it was because Clinton's negative campaign changed peoples' opinion of Hillary, not because people held Obama to a lower standard.

And I'm not even sure it helped him all that much anyway. By the time Hillary really started to attack Obama (a tactic that helped her with the "white working class" demographic, by the way) she was too far behind to catch Obama. People I know who changed their opinion of Hillary did so because they didn't believe her tears in New Hampshire, not because Hillary went negative. Their argument against Hillary was much like your argument against Obama. They say Hillary wanted people to feel sorry for her.

Anyway. This "reverse discrimination" stuff doesn't scare me nearly as much as so many of the people who make the argument. I don't know anyone who was actually denied a job because of a racial set-aside, although I have met some people who claimed to have been. If John McCain loses this election, it will not be because the American people decide that a black President would be a good reparation for slavery and Jim Crow.

The John McCain of 2000, the John McCain of the Hanoi Hilton, the John McCain who stood for campaign finance reform, the John McCain who said that Bush's tax cuts wwere a terrible mistake -- that John McCain is dead. What has taken his place is an undead vampire who, bitten by the uber-Dracula, Karl Rove, has taken to drinking the blood of the voter while pretending to be human.

He will say anything, do anything, lie, cheat, act like the worst racist on Earth, to get votes. He embraces the most bizarre elements of the religious right while pretending to agree with them. He makes absolutely insane statements about gorilla rape and allows his consigliere, Joe Lieberman, to make comments that remind people to "relax and enjoy it" the way the Texan supporter advised rape victims.

He is vacuous in his intellect -- lazy to the extreme -- not even being willing to have an expert on the Middle East explain the difference between Sunni and Shia, or to look up a map and find that Iraq and Afghanistan don't have a common border or that Czechoslovakia no longer exists. He makes the mistakes over and over again.

What a pathetic husk of what was once a decent man.

While I tend to agree with most of your comments on the 'race card' issue, I am completely surprised that you would use the term "pummeled" to describe Andrea Mitchell's handling of her interview with Rick Davis. Do you know the meaning of the word "pummeled"? Did you even WATCH that video clip? Mitchell looked as inept as a four year-old questioning her math teacher about calculus. Mitchell couldn't even control her own interview and allowed Davis to completely steam-roll over her and make her look foolish.

As pathetic as Mitchell looked, what is more pathetic is that this interview is a standard example of the (not-at-all-liberal) mainstream media's embarrassing abilities in their questioning of the severely manipulative tactics of conservative Republicans, and their almost laughable ability to ignore and apologize for John McCain's many obvious mistakes. Compare this with their unsubtle penchant for acting as mouthpieces for the right-of-center political establishment, and their drumbeat alarmist questioning of Barack Obama's capability to do almost anything without having the sky fall in response. Mitchell might as well have just asked for talking points from the McCain campaign and then read them aloud on her show, because that is pretty much what this interview amounted to.

McCain And His Campaign Must Be Shame. The McCain campaign is probably shame that they have no platform. Why, most of his campaign is spent talking about Barack Obama and scrutinizing his every move.

My question to America: Why would anyone want a President who's shame of his own platform? Why would a Nation follow a President that has no pride in his own ideas? Why would a Nation want a President like George W. Bush, ever again? George W. Bush is the only acting President in U. S. history to serve two terms without being officially elected by the People.

Who would want another "figurehead" put in place to discrace the Spirit of America ever again? Just look closely at John McCain, you really don't see very much to represent this Nation. You basicaly see a tired old status quo generation with tired old antiquated ideas. You readily see a spirit of lies and deceit, a continuation of Bush/Cheney.

Why would anyone want a President that would continue the same dependence on OIL, Coal, Nuclear, and other fossil fuel when the future calls for Solar, Wind, Hydrogen and Geothermal Fuel?