Now Barack Obama is officially in the race for President of the United States. (I still wonder how we know he isn't the Manchurian Candidate.) In his announcement speeech he compared himself to Lincoln, and said that like Lincoln he wanted to unite the nation. As I recall reading about what happened, Lincoln did in fact re-unite the nation at the point of a bayonet after over a million people had died. Obama says that the current administration has blamed problems like the rising death toll in Iraq or Katrina on the Democrats, gays, or immigrants. That is a mind boggling statement; I listen to discussions of politics a lot, and I can't recall that ever happening.