Will need more time to reply.... but just a quick response to spiker re: racism toward blacks:

I find BO's position on race to be an outright betrayal to the fight against racial inequality. To say that he TRANSCENDS race is to say that he doesn't believe racial inequality exits, that the color of our skin means nothing. It's to say that the issue of slavery no longer matters. (If anyone's interested, Brown University recently came out with a task force to address the role of slavery in the founding of the university and it issued a paper ending with proposals of how to proceed, here on out.) Back to BO - he has praised Regan for putting an end to the politics of the 60's and 70's. If I remember correctly, that would be the time of the civil rights movement, MLK, etc.

Glenn Loury has something to say about this in the following video:
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