A Few Thoughts on the 2008 Presidential Elections

1. Quite a few conservatives have, for some time now, been trying to use the "Don't Vote For Barack Obama Because He's Black" logic for awhile. Unfortunately for them this is 2008, and saying that someone's disqualified because s/he is African-American doesn't hold the same sway it did back in the day. But that doesn't mean these people won't stop trying. The latest variation of this tactic is to equate race with trust. Whenever you hear a known conservative pundit or Republican talk about "not being able to trust" Obama, it's simply code for: "Hey fellow White People! Barack Obama will make Islam the official religion of America and then force you to give your tax money to black people as reparation for slavery! How do I know? Because he's black!"
2. I'm glad the question "Was John McCain born in the US?" has died down. It was quite simply one of the most ridiculous "questtacks" (an attack in the form of a question) I've heard.
3. Piggybacking on #1: the reason that "Black = Untrustworthy" works is because it goes to the emotional core of alot of scared white Americans; they fear that minorities will rise up and start a revolution. When you think about it, that's why it was so easy for George W. Bush to mobilize and manipulate the American Public into attacking a country that was too caught up with their own problems to be any real threat to us. He could have simply said, "The Brown People have made the First Strike. We must fight back!" and people still would have supported the invasion. We've been mentally and psychologically breed to see people from the Middle East as bomb-loving, fanatical criminals (even in the original Transformers cartoon, their was a country named -wait for it- "Carbomya" that pissed off Casey Kassem to no end). So again, when pundits and People Who Get Their Political Information From Unconfirmed Sources say things like, "Barack Obama was born and trained a Muslim," it's just a reflection of (some) white American's fear.
4. As pointed out by others, if Wesley Clark had said, "Is every pilot who gets shot down eligible to be president?" I would be backing his comments 100%. While I don't think it was a complete "swift boat attack," it was definitely personal. But people seem to forget that Clark was Hillary Clinton's surrogate, not Obama's. I shudder to think what politicians would be doing if George Washington was a horse breeder before becoming our first president, and not in the military.