I read this following quote in Josh Marshall's blog. If David Seaton had written the following he would have been crucified.

If I were a completely amoral Republican operative, I'd try to find some white women that Obama dated before Michelle and get them into the public's stream of consciousness anyway I could. Its a tactic so vile I don't even like speculating about it, but if you want to be ready for the worst, I think Rove just tipped his hand at where they plan to go. -- David Kurtz

Is the "conversation" about race that Obama suggested?
Look, if you read me you may have gathered that I think Barack Obama is a fraud, but the last thing I would ever criticize him for is for dating white women. First because it is nobody's business who he dated and second...  One of his biggest selling points is that he is bi-racial.

His mother was a white woman fkrisesake! If he found white women unattractive that would be abnormal. A person's mother in great part determines their relations with all women thereafter. I think this reaction is as true for girls as it is for boys. Mothers form a person's taste in women.

For example, when I was a little kid my late mother was a drop dead redhead with big hooters and I have been happily married to a drop dead redhead with big hooters nigh on to thirty years. But on the other hand my momma was a lousy housekeeper and her messy house embarrassed me with my school friends and so consequently I married a German who is obsessed by domestic cleanliness.... both have/had fantastic senses of humor. My wife is that rarity, a sexy clown. Moral: mothers are mined and cherry picked for qualities and defects.

Really, in Obama's case the interesting psycho babble point is why somebody who was raised by white women is not married to a white woman himself. I think it was Konrad Lorenz who had all these baby geese following him around because he was the first thing they saw when they hatched and they thought he was their mother.

So, if you are an amateur psychologist (and what American isn't) and you really wanted to delve into Barack Obama's psyche and come up with nuggets of insight into his character, you would begin to study the similarities and differences between Stanley Ann Dunham and Michelle Robinson and I am sure the differences are much more than "skin deep".

An example: both  are very well educated women, but Michelle is a very together and responsible mother and very rooted in her community... You could play this game in cocktail parties from now to the inauguration ball.

I am not at all sure it would do it would do Obama any harm politically: quite the contrary.

I am going to treasure the comments I get on this post.

Obama Camp Closely Linked With Ethanol - NYT
 When VeraSun Energy inaugurated a new ethanol processing plant last summer in Charles City, Iowa, some of that industry’s most prominent boosters showed up. Leaders of the National Corn Growers Association and the Renewable Fuels Association, for instance, came to help cut the ribbon — and so did Senator Barack Obama. Then running far behind Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in name recognition and in the polls, Mr. Obama was in the midst of a campaign swing through the state where he would eventually register his first caucus victory. And as befits a senator from Illinois, the country’s second largest corn-producing state, he delivered a ringing endorsement of ethanol as an alternative fuel.
Mr. Obama is running as a reformer who is seeking to reduce the influence of special interests. But like any other politician, he has powerful constituencies that help shape his views. And when it comes to domestic ethanol, almost all of which is made from corn, he also has advisers and prominent supporters with close ties to the industry at a time when energy policy is a point of sharp contrast between the parties and their presidential candidates. (...) Ethanol is one area in which Mr. Obama strongly disagrees with his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain of Arizona. While both presidential candidates emphasize the need for the United States to achieve “energy security” while also slowing down the carbon emissions that are believed to contribute to global warming, they offer sharply different visions of the role that ethanol, which can be made from a variety of organic materials, should play in those efforts. Mr. McCain advocates eliminating the multibillion-dollar annual government subsidies that domestic ethanol has long enjoyed. As a free trade advocate, he also opposes the 54-cent-a-gallon tariff that the United States slaps on imports of ethanol made from sugar cane, which packs more of an energy punch than corn-based ethanol and is cheaper to produce. “We made a series of mistakes by not adopting a sustainable energy policy, one of which is the subsidies for corn ethanol, which I warned in Iowa were going to destroy the market” and contribute to inflation, Mr. McCain said this month in an interview with a Brazilian newspaper, O Estado de São Paulo. “Besides, it is wrong,” he added, to tax Brazilian-made sugar cane ethanol, “which is much more efficient than corn ethanol.” Mr. Obama, in contrast, favors the subsidies, some of which end up in the hands of the same oil companies he says should be subjected to a windfall profits tax. In the name of helping the United States build “energy independence,” he also supports the tariff, which some economists say may well be illegal under the World Trade Organization’s rules but which his advisers say is not.

I think it must be obvious by now  that Obama is bullshitting somebody... but I'm sure you are sure it isn't you.

This is what Frank Rich wrote two years ago:

The more important issue is not whether Mr. Obama will seek the presidency, but what kind of candidate he would be. If the Democratic Party is to be more than a throw-out-Bush party, it can’t settle for yet again repackaging its well-worn ideas, however worthy, with a new slogan containing the word “New.” It needs a major infusion of steadfast leadership. That’s the one lesson it should learn from George Bush. Call him arrogant or misguided or foolish, this president has been a leader. He had a controversial agenda — enacting big tax cuts, privatizing Social Security, waging “pre-emptive” war, packing the courts with judges who support his elisions of constitutional rights — and he didn’t fudge it. He didn’t care if half the country despised him along the way.(...) The Democrats may well win on Election Day this year. But one of their best hopes for long-term viability in the post-Bush era is that Barack Obama steps up and changes the party before the party of terminal timidity and equivocation changes him.

I guess that is settled by now.