Barack Obama

Senator Barack Obama announced for the Presidency yesterday.

To ignore the race or gender issues inherent in Clinton, Richardson, or Obama's campaigns would be disingenuous. Maybe, just maybe, our national psyche needs a woman, or an Hispanic-American, or an African-American to run and win so that the nation might move past prejudices - if only to a small extent.

But will the majority of Americans then move further and ask these candidates how they would address our serious problems - and what they would have us do?

• the threat of religious extremism to our national security
• the threat to our lives, economy, and planet from global warming
• our increasingly dangerous dependence on foreign energy sources
  
• the threat to the viability of the middle class in the United States, due in part to the transfer of wealth to the top tier
• the decreasing economic vitality of the United States internationally
• the civil war in Iraq that we hastened- if not caused - and the concomitant enervation of our military
  
• the threats against our basic freedoms from international business and our own government
  
• affordable health care
  

How soon before we hear smarmy talk-show references - intimating what exactly?- to Barack HUSSEIN Obama?

And, as to the experience canard: is John Edwards really any more experienced than Obama? Was candidate George W. Bush any more experienced?