UW-Madison Looking Good as New Grants and Innovation Soar

The war on public education by Wisconsin Republicans has run into reality.

The University of Wisconsin System remains the standard for public higher education systems. No matter how zealously Republicans oppose critical thinking, institutional analyses and empirical investigation, much of America hails these values.

Surf through UW dept. websites and the news is good.

From the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP):

The Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the nation's longest standing center for poverty research, has been awarded a five-year, $9.5 million cooperative agreement to serve as the national Poverty Research Center. The award from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), the principal advisor to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) on development of policy and legislation, strategic planning, policy research and evaluation, and economic analysis, comes as IRP marks its 50th year of examining the causes of poverty and inequality in the United States and approaches to reduce them. The award establishes IRP as the nation's sole federally funded Poverty Research Center, an honor that IRP has shared with the Center for Poverty Research at the University of California, Davis, and the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality for the past five years.

Noted in a brief history of the Institute is the commitment to intellectual honesty and implicit moral principles set forth in 1964, (Evanson, Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, on behalf of the Institute for Research on Poverty).

In the politics of 2016, a muttered talking point passes for argument on poverty-related issues, not so at the IRP:

The Institute was created in March 1966, when the University of Wisconsin-Madison reached agreement with the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity to establish a national center for study of 'the nature, causes, and cures of poverty.' A national center, located in Madison, was a logical response to the issues and the times.

When the federal government undertook new efforts to aid the poor in the 1960s, it also determined that social programs would be studied and evaluated to determine their effectiveness. In 1965 a presidential executive order directed all federal agencies to incorporate measures of cost effectiveness and program evaluation into their decisions. The guiding concept was that the policies and programs then being developed should be shaped by sound logic, firm data, and systematic thinking rather than by good intentions alone.

Charged with implementing the War on Poverty that President Johnson had declared in 1964, the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) sought to establish a center where experts would perform basic research, provide counsel, and serve as a ready information source.

To distance it from the arena of day-to-day issues and problem-solving, the center should be located outside of Washington.

The University of Wisconsin was a likely site in view of its long tradition of applied social policy research and because several of its faculty members had served on the staff of the president's Council of Economic Advisers when the antipoverty strategy was being formulated. ...

Sociologists and political scientists analyzed the interconnections of race, segregation, discrimination, and political power. 18

18 In the list of IRP books, see those by Peter Eisinger; see also Karl Taeuber, Franklin Wilson, David James, and Alma Taeuber, "A Demographic Perspective on School Desegregation in the United States," IRP Discussion Paper no. 617-80, and Franklin Wilson and Karl Taeuber, "Residential and School Segregation: Some Tests of Their Association," IRP Reprint no. 333, 1979.

UW-Madison is looking good, as American politics appears on the brink and a new chapter in race-baiting and demonetization has taken hold of the political culture.

Gary Kamiya Is Off Today

The Devil, strike that, the culture made me do it!

Gary Kamiya strikes out today with his piece on cop killer Richard Poplawski.

The sub-headline asks "amid the deafening din of the right wing's anti-government rhetoric, how extreme is (Poplawski)?"

Kamiya should have stopped at the editor's sub-headline in his 1,100-word piece.

Kamiya's internally incoherent argument is a brew of sloppy reasoning with a misreading of Hobbes' social contract theory thrown in.

Kamiya attempts to connect rightwing killer, anti-Semitic nut-job Poplawski to rightwing, mainstream nutty political culture.

Writes Kamiya:

As his friend, Edward Perkovic, told the Associated Press, Poplawski feared 'the Obama gun ban that's on the way' and 'didn't like our rights being infringed upon.'

Such obsessions don't come out of a vacuum. Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and the GOP have been whipping up hatred and fear of Obama and 'liberal Democrats' for years. Joined by the National Rifle Association, which has run false and irresponsible ads claiming that Obama is planning to take away Americans' guns, they have encouraged and helped to create a pathological right-wing subculture in which free-floating hatred of 'the government' mixes with a maniacal fetish for guns. Poplawski is the diseased fruit of that ugly tree. ... Theirs is a Hobbesian world in which law enforcement cannot be trusted to stop criminals. Hence their favorite slogan, 'When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.' Poplawski proudly subscribed to that belief.

Hobbes Loved the State

To begin with, the social contract theorist Thomas Hobbes believed in the necessity of a strong state—a society in which protection and security triumphs over individual will—lest the individuals' lives be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". (Leviathan, yuck!).

Yet, Kamiya identifies Hobbes with the right-libertarian's skepticism of state and police power. If Kamiya has read Leviathan, he didn't understand it.

Myself I share the libertarian's skepticism of state power [this skepticism is healthy if one beleives in a classical liberal democracy], though I don't own or particularly value guns.

Feared Obama, So Poplawski Killed Three Cops

Kamiya writes of Poplawski, "He is responsible for his action. You can't tar every conservative because a pathological murderer shared some of his or her core beliefs."

Right, so what then does a pathological murderer have to do with the rightwing, whack culture? Not much.

But Kamiya tries to insinuate a causal connection: Feared Obama because of Rush and Fox , so Poplawski killed three cops.

Is Kamiya saying that Rush, Fox and the like are also anti-Semitic, like Poplawski? That they advocate killing cops so Obama does not take their guns, like Poplawski?

Kamiya instead lamely suggests that "they have encouraged and helped to create a pathological right-wing subculture in which free-floating hatred of 'the government'", qualifying his earlier admonition that you can't tar conservatives with a whack like Poplawski out of existence.

So the rightwing are political culture polluters, says Kamiya. Maybe then we should police and outlaw these culture polluters, right?

Look, Rush and Fox are slime because they have little regard for liberty, care about power and not people, and their political rants are poorly reasoned. But in this regard of uninformed, poorly reasoned polemical tracts, they have a friend in Gary Kamiya today.

- via mal contends

Salon Looks at 1960s Civil Rights Movement

Lauren Hermele has a photo essay on 1960s civil rights veterans in Salon. Great stuff.

A lot of the people comprising the civil rights movement have names that history will not record.

And quite a few live in Wisconsin today.

Registering voters, demanding jobs, risking their lives, enforcing democracy; that's what they did.

Today's Republican Party, like Wisconsin attorney general J.B. Van Hollen, and know-nothing GOP bloggers still don't get why so many were incensed by last year's voter suppression efforts. It's likely that they never will.

The American civil rights movement lives on today, knowing that they changed the course of history and stood up for their brothers and sisters.

Some were killed, blinded for life, maimed, but they put their bodies on the line against racists and know-nothings and we salute them today.

SPLC: Extremist/Racist Threat to Obama

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is expressing concern over a rise of hate activity that they link to the presidency of Barack Obama.

Writes the SPLC: "President Obama's election and the deepening economic crisis are creating the perfect storm for white supremacists intent on swelling their ranks."

Also reported by the SPLC:

Racist Extremists in the Military
SPLC urges enforcement of zero-tolerance policy
A recent search of a U.S. Marine's barracks turned up a journal containing white supremacist material and a plan to kill President Obama. The incident is the latest disturbing account that suggests extremists are infiltrating the military — even as officials deny there's a problem. SPLC President Richard Cohen recently urged the Department of Defense to uphold a zero-tolerance policy against white supremacist activity.

Krugman on the GOP

The reality-based community has long asserted what Paul Krugman sums up in his column this morning in the Times: That the GOP is more a faction dedicated to power acquisition that is in direct conflict with the American people than it is a political party representing citizen views.

Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash. And everything that has happened in recent years, from the choice of Mr. Bush as the party’s champion, to the Bush administration’s pervasive incompetence, to the party’s shrinking base, is a consequence of that decision. ... That’s why the soon-to-be gone administration’s failure is bigger than Mr. Bush himself: it represents the end of the line for a political strategy that dominated the scene for more than a generation.
The reality of this strategy’s collapse has not, I believe, fully sunk in with some observers.

That's an understatement.

Someone to go to the well with

President Lyndon Baines Johnson nationalized the old Texas sentiment of confidence and respect: He’s someone to go to the well with.

As we approach the end of the Bush-Cheney administration, we are presented with the consequences of eight years of nihilistic politics, greed-and-crony finance, and feeding of hatreds and division among our brothers and sisters.

That catastrophic bequest is the lack of confidence and fading liquidity in our financial system that threatens to squander our life savings, and kill innovation and the common effort.

The legacy of Bush-Cheney is the loss of confidence and respect, the belief that we’re all in this together with men and women who are people we would go the well with.
- 30 -
-via mal contends

McCain Using Race Now

Update: Affirmative distraction
via mal contends - Jesse Helms and the Southern Strategy live.

John McCain just cannot resist that old-time religion used by the GOP in fighting general election presidential campaigns: Race as a wedge issue.

Obama says McCain flip-flops by opposing affirmative action reads a McClatchy headline on a piece by William Douglas, though a more instructive headline is that: McCain did flip-flop on affirmative action.

That flip-flop is a fact, and should be reported as such.

Writes Douglas:

McCain, speaking on ABC's 'This Week,' said he backs a proposed ballot initiative in Arizona that would prohibit affirmative action policies by state and local governments. ... McCain's endorsement was an apparent shift on affirmative action. ... He opposed a 1998 resolution in the Arizona legislature that asked voters to eliminate most preferences based on race, gender or ethnic origin. ... 'Rather than engage in divisive ballot initiatives, we must have a dialogue and cooperation and mutual efforts together to provide every child in America to fulfill their expectations,' (McCain) said at the time.

As Jamin Raskin has written, opponents of equality of opportunity have been arguing since reconstruction that blacks just need to help themselves and have only themselves to blame for any lack of achievement in America.

The critics of affirmative action invite us to believe that we live in a color-blind society in which the last vestige of racial discrimination is affirmative action itself. ... To transcend the destructive politics of division and derision surrounding affirmative action (if we still can), we need to reaffirm the equality of all peoples in a culturally pluralist society and to posit a universal politics of freedom and equality for the next century. But a vigorous defense of affirmative action right now is central to such a politics. For in a society where the lines of race and gender double as lines of class and power, even the idea of affirmative action for minorities and women is an affront to the structure of domination and inequality. Our job must be to make affirmative action the first line of defense in a politics which insists that all citizens have a right to equal participation in the fruits of our social life.

I'm sure a desperate John McCain will have no qualms about using race, overtly and through subliminal message impressions, as a means of staving off a rout in November.

Jobless? Losing your standard of living? The blacks (and their Jew allies) did it!

Jesse Helms would be proud. Now McCain needs to get down to Philadelphia , Mississippi and make a rip-roaring good speech, a la Ronald Reagan.

Meeting Racism Head-on

Update: And speaking of Islam, Was Muhammed REALLY a man of peace? Human Events is on this faster than you can say 'Islamofascism'

Second-hand, I heard an anecdote last week about some typical rural, white Georgia residents.

As reported to me, said one resident: "A lot of people like Obama. I love Obama, but it’s too bad he’s a Muslim, he’ll never get elected. "

McClatchy had a piece Thursday on the same sentiment: Where did the Web rumors about Obama come from?

Writes Matt Stearns:

Some things about Barack Obama rub some voters the wrong way.

"We don't need a Muslim," said Jannay Smith, a retiree from Kokomo,
Ind. "Who's to say if he gets in there what he'll do?"

Added Steve Shallenberger, a Kokomo electrician: "He's just calling himself a Christian because he knows that's what we in Indiana want to hear."

Then there's Sherry Richey, also from Kokomo: "He wouldn't put his hand on the Bible; he wanted the Quran. He won't put his hand over his heart during the anthem or say the Pledge of Allegiance. He's too un-American."

All of these slurs on Obama are categorically untrue.

But, Stearns notes, this has not prevented the slurs from being pushed on the Internet, nor has it prevented campaigns from appealing to the racism and ignorance that still exists, worrying some astute analysts.

Writes Stearns:

E-mails falsely claiming that Obama is a Muslim, that he took the oath of office on a Quran and that he refuses to take the Pledge of Allegiance have stormed inboxes. A newer e-mail has a picture, allegedly of Obama posing with his African family, with the title 'Say Hi to the next potential first family.'

I received an e-mail like this myself last year, from a decent American, and the e-mail is despicable (published below).

The fact is racism exists, but this time we are not going to run from it, and John McCain will do his worst. The following e-mail is repulsive, then again so is John McCain's appeal to fear and ignorance.

Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2007 08:20:53 -0800 (PST)

Subject: Why Obama wants to be President of the US...

Very interesting and something that should be considered in your choice. If you do not ever forward anything else, please forward this to all your contacts...this is very scarey to think of what lies ahead of us here in our own United States .... better heed this and pray about it and share it.

We checked this out on " snopes.com". It is factual. Check for yourself. Who is Barack Obama? Probable U. S. presidential candidate, Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., a black MUSLIM from Nyangoma-Kogel , Kenya and Ann Dunham, a white ATHIEST from Wichita , Kansas ..

Obama's parents met at the University of Hawaii . When Obama was two years old, his parents divorced. His father returned to Kenya . His mother then married Lolo Soetoro, a RADICAL Muslim from Indonesia.?

When Obama was! 6 years old, the family relocated to Indonesia . Obama attended a MUSLIM school in Jakarta He also spent two years in a Catholic school. Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim. He is quick to point out that, "He was once a Muslim, but that he also attended Catholic school."

Obama's political handlers are attempting to make it appear that?

Obama's introduction to Islam came via his father, and that this influence was temporary at best. In reality, the senior Obama returned to Kenya soon after the divorce, and never again had any direct influence over his son's education. Lolo Soetoro, the second husband of Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, introduced his stepson to Islam. Obama was enrolled in a Wahabi school in Jakarta Wahabism is the RADICAL teaching that is followed by the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad against the western world.

Since it is politically expedient to be a CHRISTIAN when seeking major public office in the United States , Barack Hussein Obama has joined the United Church of Christ in an attempt to downplay his Muslim background.

ALSO, keep in mind that when he was sworn into office he DID NOT use the Holy Bible , but instead the Koran. Let us all remain alert concerning Obama's expected presidential candidacy.

The Muslims have said they plan on destroying the US from the inside out, what better way to start than at the highest level - through the President of the United States , one of their own!!!! Please forward to everyone you know. Would you want this man leading our country?...... NOT ME!!!

Hillary Is the Abusive Boyfriend and the Psycho Ex-Girlfriend

Never did buy that argument that Hillary's appeals to racism are good for Obama because he'll face the same line of attack in the fall.

Hey, he'll get it out there, if he doesn't get it here.

Or the argument that Democrats need Hillary, cause she really knows what's best.

Ran across this at John Aravosis at AmericaBlog, in The real 3:00 AM call. The piece is from Madatoms.

Hillary Clinton: The Psycho Ex-Girlfriend of the Democratic Party

Despite all the math counting her out, Hillary Clinton fervently remains in the race to become the Democratic nominee for president in 2008. She has become the Democratic Party's psycho ex-girlfriend, and she's not going away without a restraining order.

It's 2:31 AM. The Democratic Party is sleeping peacefully when it hears its phone buzz on the night stand. It rolls over and sees "Hillary" on the caller ID. It pauses briefly, considering pushing "END" and not dealing with this shit tonight. The thought is appealing but the Democratic Party knows that if it doesn't take this call, another one is only minutes away.

DEMS: ...Hello?

Hillary: Hey baby.

DEMS: C'mon Hillary. Enough with this.

Hillary: Don't you get it? You NEED me.

DEMS: No, I don't. It was fun while it lasted but I'm with Barack now. I made my choice, it's done.

Hillary: You can't really mean that. How can you say that after all the good times we had?

DEMS: To be honest, I started hanging out with you because Bill's pretty awesome.

Hillary: But I'm just like Bill!

DEMS: No, you're not. Bill is charismatic, inspiring, and gets me really good weed.

Hillary: Fuck you. You're elitist!


DEMS: I'm going back to sleep.

Hillary: No, no, wait. I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. Listen... there's still got to be a chance. Remember when people told George W it was all over. When the numbers were against him?

DEMS: Yeah but...

Hillary: Remember?! And remember how everyone said America didn't really want to be with George W? But they stuck it out anyway?

DEMS: Yeah and they're really fucked up now, Hillary.

Hillary: But WE'LL make it work. Forget Barack, baby. Just take me back and we can forget this ever happened.

DEMS: Look, I think you're a really good Senator... let's just keep it that way, OK?

Hillary: ...I'll see you at the convention.

DEMS: No! Hillary I told you...

CLICK

DEMS: Dammit. Crazy bitch.

Patrick J. Buchanan Looks with Alarm at Declining 'White' Population

I like reading Patrick J. Buchanan. He's a great stylist, and unlike so many on the right, he's earnest and anti-interventionist in foreign policy.

On matters of race, though, Buchanan is whack.

In his latest column, The Way Our World Ends, Buchanan bemoans the future in which whites will compose an ever-decreasing proportion of the world's population, an alarming trend in Buchanan's view.

Writes Buchanan:

In 1950, whites were 28 percent of world population and Africans 9 percent, a ratio of three-to-one. In 2060, the ratio will remain the same. But the colors will be reversed. People of African ancestry will be 25 percent of the world's population. People of European descent will have fallen to 9.8 percent.

More arresting is that the white population is shrinking not only in
relative but in real terms. Two hundred million white people, one in every six on earth -- a number equal to the entire population of France, Britain, Holland and Germany -- will vanish by 2060.

The Caucasian race is going the way of the Mohicans.

And thinking locally, Buchanan notes:

And America? According to the Pew Research Center, the Hispanic population of the United States will triple to 127 million by 2050, as Mexico's population grows to 130 million. An erasure of the U.S. border, or merger of the two countries, or the linguistic, cultural and social annexation of the American Southwest by Mexico appears fated.

Facts elude the distraught Buchanan, fearfully betraying his status as a good Irishman.

Much of the American Southwest was stolen from Mexico in an American war of aggression in the mid-19th century.

Race is a sick illusion; it has no biological or anthropological meaning, other than that of a social-psychological pathology used prominently and tragically in American history, continuing today.

Buchanan does offer a nod to past Western genocide and aggression, noting:

Hopefully, the peoples of Asia, Africa and the Middle East, who are about to inherit the earth as we pass away, will treat us better than our ancestors treated them in the five centuries that Western Man ruled the world.

Buchanan would do better to note that constructs of race and dehumanization of those thought less than human are irrational and ludicrous.

We have nothing to fear from those with darker skin color, Mr. Buchanan, and your fear is unfounded.

"Don't worry, be happy," as Bobby McFerrin put it. And I think McFerrin may even be a black dude.

More Racist Crap from Hillary

John Aravosis at AmericaBlog asks: Are Hillary's latest attacks subtly racist, and intentionally so?

That's an easy one. Intentional and subtle.

Writes an appalled and angry Aravosis:

As a Southerner, the attacks on Obama being elitist by the elites of this country, it made me uncomfortable. Not just because the attacks are generally unfair and a distortion of what he actually said, but because it smacks of the sort of dirty, snide, racial attacks of the old South - the 'uppity' black man attack. ... This is a disgusting, racial attack against Obama being portrayed as an attack on Pennsylvania voters, and I will have none of it.

This project of subtle racist impressions of Obama projected onto the electoral audience has been going on since Wisconsin, Feb. 19, when Hillary was killed across all demographics, including white males.

See Hillary's Appeal to Racism Is a Project, Not an Accident for a further discussion of Hillary' southern strategy-light.

Attacks on Obama Fail, Hillary Takes Hit, Poll Shows

Good news for those who hate appeals to racism.

The racially charged debate over Barack Obama's relationship with his longtime pastor hasn't much changed his close contest against Hillary Clinton, or hurt him against Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll ....

The negativity of the Obama-Clinton contest seems to be hurting Sen. Clinton more, the poll shows. A 52% majority of all voters says she doesn't have the background or values they identify with. ...

Also, fewer voters hold positive views of Sen. Clinton than did so just two weeks ago in the Journal/NBC poll. Among all voters, 48% have negative feelings toward her and 37% positive, a decline from a net positive 45% to 43% rating in early March. While 51% of African-American voters have positive views, that is down 12 points from earlier this month, before the Wright controversy.

More ominous for Sen. Clinton is the net-negative rating she drew for the first time from women, one of the groups where she has drawn most support. In this latest poll, voters with negative views narrowly outstrip those with positive ones, 44% to 42%. That compares with her positive rating from 51% of women in the earlier March poll.

Obama Speech Draws Raves

Via PocketNines at Kos

Philadelphia Inquirer Editorial:
With his brilliant speech on race relations yesterday at the National Constitution Center, Barack Obama showed why his campaign for president has the aura of a mission.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Editorial:
As an example of contemporary oratory, it was stunning. As political rhetoric, it was designed to do far more than damage control and, in the end, distilled the essence of his candidacy.

New York Times Editorial:
We can’t know how effective Mr. Obama’s words will be with those who will not draw the distinctions between faith and politics that he drew, or who will reject his frank talk about race. What is evident, though, is that he not only cleared the air over a particular controversy — he raised the discussion to a higher plane.

Los Angeles Times Editorial:
No single speech will recalibrate America's consideration of race and politics, but we are closer today, thanks to this remarkable address, to facing our history and perfecting our nation.

Dallas Morning News Editorial:
Has any major U.S. politician in modern times ever given a speech about race in America as unflinching, human and ultimately hopeful as the one Barack Obama delivered yesterday? ...

It was possibly the most important major speech on race in America since Dr. King died, and it probably saved Mr. Obama's candidacy. If, in the end, Barack Obama does not win the nomination, let it never be said that he did not serve his country.

Chicago Sun-Times Editorial:
So Obama, in that exceptional way he has of brushing aside polemics, stepped up to a podium in Philadelphia and challenged us to see all the shades of gray, to embrace our greater and shared humanity.

It was a moving moment in American history to hear a man who could be president dissect the rancorous matter of race with such candor, and it called to mind other piercing addresses by the likes of FDR, Kennedy and King.

Sacramento Bee Editorial:
This was not a campaign speech; it was Barack Obama speaking to the ages. Clearly, he has thought about this issue for a very long time. Americans can learn from him, no matter what course the campaign may take.

Boston Globe Editorial:
... Obama took the opportunity to engage the question of race in America, starting a bold, uncomfortably honest conversation. He asked Americans to talk openly about the deep wells of anger and resentment over racism, discrimination, and affirmative action. It's a call to break out of the country's racial stalemate and finally reach a new national understanding.

Seattle Times Editorial:
In the annals of American history, a watershed moment should come from "A More Perfect Union," Sen. Barack Obama's powerful speech linking 221 years of race relations.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Editorial:
On Tuesday morning, at a moment of maximum peril to his own ambitions, Sen. Barack Obama delivered not just a speech, but an extraordinary gift to America: A way to transcend racial divisions and political cynicism and set about the task of forming a more perfect union.

The 45-minute address, delivered to an audience of 200 elected officials and religious leaders at Philadelphia's Constitution Center, would have been remarkable under any circumstances. Under the circumstances that beset the senator from Illinois, it was the equivalent of a World Series walk-off grand-slam home run, a singular moment in the history of American political rhetoric.

Houston Chronicle Editorial:
Obama, confronted with flaws in his own church "family," passes these tests. His thoughtful exploration of those flaws certainly was good for his campaign. But by fully and realistically exploring and discussing the hard topic of race, Obama did more. He showed deep understanding of this complex culture, and faith in the strength of the national family.

Newsday Editorial:
The complex calculus of racial animus in this nation is real. And it is powerful. And, as Obama said, "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." This nation needs to bridge that chasm. One speech won't do it. Nor will one candidacy. But it would help if we stop using race as a political cudgel.

Newark Star-Ledger Editorial:
This was not a speech written by a political spinmeister just back from taking the pulse of the latest focus group. It was the heartfelt speech of a man who has spent a good part of his life thinking about what it means to be an American.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Editorial:
When we think of words in politics or governance that had to be said, we think of the Gettysburg Address or Franklin Delano Roosevelt's admonition that all we had to fear was "fear itself." And now we think of Obama's speech on race - words that sorely needed saying.

San Jose Mercury-News Editorial:
If Obama is, as we hope, the leader who can draw people across political divides to create real change and a renewed optimism in America, then confronting race head-on was inevitable. Perhaps Pastor Wright did us all a favor.

The Oregonian Editorial::
But every American, young and old, should hear this speech. Obama certainly isn't a post-racial candidate, if there is such a thing, and he didn't claim to be one Tuesday. But he did offer an inspiring vision of a nation where unity eclipses division, and where the identity we cherish most is the one we all share: American.

Des Moines Register Editorial:
His speech was frank and honest. And it offered hope that by confronting the racial resentments that continue to divide us, this nation can move forward toward becoming a more tolerant and understanding place.

Rochester Democrat and Chronicle Editorial:
Then again, Obama has already astounded conventional wisdom with the progress he's made in this year's presidential campaign. For the nation's sake, hope that America's conscience was at least pricked to want to do better.

Kansas City Star Editorial:
It would have been politically expedient for Obama to disown Wright totally. But in a reflection of his own integrity, Obama said Wright was instrumental in the development of his faith and had other virtues that his critics were ignoring.

Eugene Robinson, Washington Post:
Yesterday morning, in what may be remembered as a landmark speech regardless of who becomes the next president, Obama established new parameters for a dialogue on race in America that might actually lead somewhere -- that might break out of the sour stasis of grievance and countergrievance, of insensitivity and hypersensitivity, of mutual mistrust.

Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish:
I have never felt more convinced that this man's candidacy - not this man, his candidacy - and what he can bring us to achieve - is an historic opportunity. This was a testing; and he did not merely pass it by uttering safe bromides. He addressed the intimate, painful love he has for an imperfect and sometimes embittered man. And how that love enables him to see that man's faults and pain as well as his promise. This is what my faith is about. It is what the Gospels are about. This is a candidate who does not merely speak as a Christian. He acts like a Christian.

Courtland Milloy, Washington Post
Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), who co-chairs the Maryland for Obama campaign, hit the nail on the head when he told me: "Obama has the ability to elevate our thinking beyond the chicken-yard scratching and biting. He calls on us to soar like eagles. And if he can't always take you there, he can sure dare you to go."

David Corn, MotherJones.com:
With this address, Obama was trying to show the nation a pathway to a society free of racial gridlock and denial. Moreover, he declared that bridging the very real racial divide of today is essential to forging the popular coalition necessary to transform America into a society with a universal and effective health care system, an education system that serves poor and rich children, and an economy that yields a decent-paying jobs for all. Obama was not playing the race card. He was shooting the moon.

John Dickerson, Slate:
Can you give a State of the Union address before you're president? Barack Obama talked about race in America for 45 minutes in a nearly 5,000-word speech. That was longer than some of the annual presidential addresses, and though, yes, those speeches tend to cover more topics, this one felt like it addressed the actual state of our union more than those dreary January list readings presidents are obligated to perform.

Janny Scott, New York Times:
Yet the speech was also hopeful, patriotic, quintessentially American — delivered against a blue backdrop and a phalanx of stars and stripes. Mr. Obama invoked the fundamental values of equality of opportunity, fairness, social justice. He confronted race head-on, then reached beyond it to talk sympathetically about the experiences of the white working class and the plight of workers stripped of jobs and pensions.

Jonathan Alter, Newsweek:
In introducing the speech, Harris Wofford, the former senator from Pennsylvania, hinted at the historic weight that hung over the occasion. Wofford, a friend of Martin Luther King Jr.'s and a onetime adviser to President John F. Kennedy, recalled a White House conversation with King, after Kennedy had informed King that there would be no quick vote on the sweeping civil rights legislation pending. "Martin turned to me and said, 'I had hoped we at long last had a president who had the intelligence to understand this problem and the political skill to solve it and the moral passion to see it through. I'm convinced ... that he has got the intelligence and the skill. We'll have to see if he has the passion'."
Wofford suggested that Obama did in fact possess all three qualities. The critics, reporters, cable commentators—and ultimately the voters—will all be weighing that assertion in the aftermath of the most personal and extensive discussion of the legacy of slavery made by any major American politician in memory. For the moment, Obama gave them much more to talk about than the sermons of Jeremiah Wright.

Jim Mitchell, Dallas Morning News:
Politicians rarely achieve such a depth of humanity, in part because they're captive to narrow life experiences, rigid ideology or consultants. It's one thing to know intellectually that race is still a factor in American life and how it polls. It's quite another to eloquently express the profound stain of past racial injustices without being trite, hostile or unabashedly partisan.

Jon Robin Baitz, Huffington Post:
Today we saw and heard a preview of our brightest possible American future in Senator Barack Obama's glorious speech. This, then, is what it means to be presidential. To be moral. To have a real center. To speak honestly, from the heart, for the benefit of all. If there was any doubt about what we have missed in the anti-intellectual, ruthlessly incurious Bush years, and even the slippery Clinton ones (the years of "what is is"), those doubts were laid to rest by Barack Obama's magisterial speech today. A speech in which he distanced himself from a flawed father figure, Reverend Wright, and did so with almost Shakespearian dignity and honor.