Quick thoughts on the Obama speech before I read about it or hear commentary on tv.

I don't think Obama's speech was a winner; but I also don't know how he could have come up with a slam dunk speech considering his close association with his pastor, either. No matter how Obama spins it, that pastor stirs up hate and hate for any reason isn't good.

Chiding the media for playing the clips of the raging Wright over and over was just the other side of the coin. Obama's had his brilliant speeches played over and over again on the tv which is why people know who the hell he is. The media can love you and hate you in 24 hours, just like Bear Stearns stock can go from $84 to $2 in three days.

The elephant in the room was finally addressed and I think the dialogue from here out will be a bit more honest, but I'm not sure it will be more uplifting nor will that feeling of unity - we are all one -- be as strong. I liked both Obama and Hillary but only now feel like I can never be part of his club...which is sad.

I don't think Obama should have rolled his white grandmother under the bus saying she'd shown racial bigotry...don't quote me I can't remember his exact words -- but got the fact he threw his white grandmother under the bus as a counterpoint to his black pastor's transgressions.

Frankly, no matter how oppressed Pastor Wright has been - his words were disgusting and divisive (which I pronounce with the long I for the middle syllable as opposed to the news people who are now championing the short i.)

I was hoping Obama was the start of a new world of ideas and his biracial background made him white and black, but it looks like past transgressions and oppression on his black side makes this impossible.

Being a white woman I don't personally know anything other than the challenges that face women: less money in the work place; derogatory statements and epithets; 2nd class citizen treatment; poked fun at and myths promoted because of being born female; etc. -- a long history of abuse and oppression.

Women of any color have had to wait till the black man had the vote before we were allowed to vote. Same thing with the supreme court - black man first -- then a woman. Which is why I'm sensitive to women's issues.

I love equality in all ways. I want all people to be equal and not separate. Why I hate religion is because it's another way to keep us separate. And now Obama says that black churches are different and reflect past oppression which is why his pastor has said such horrendous things.

Isn't this the same reasoning about Pit Bull fighting when Vick or his "surrogate" said dog fighting is part of the Afro-American culture?

I say fuck that. Who wants to claim dog maiming and killing for fun as part of their culture? What the hell kind of culture is that? (End of dog rant...boils my blood as you can see.)

I do know when one group wants to talk about their problems of inequality, it makes me want to talk about mine. I don't see that as unifying.

I see right now in today's world, millions of gays and lesbians who are being discriminated against daily. They cannot marry; they are targets of physical and mental abuse; they are punchlines in jokes; excommunicated from churches, disowned by their families, taunted, laughed at, beaten up. I have a distant relative who was bludgeoned to death because he was gay.

It's a tough world out there, so how do we go forward to make it better? I don't think by saying God Damn America is the way to go no matter what your cultural differences, your past experiences, your color, or your gender or your sexual orientation.

It just plain hurts my heart to hear my country damned for any reason. So at the end of Obama's speech I just feel blue, as if I have lost something special. But, I'm not sure what it is.