Oh, those idealistic, young Obama campaign volunteers. Campaigning in the heart of Indiana and Pennsylvania, they probably set out on their missions excited to bring willing voters over to their side. Instead, many of them had quite the opposite experience. The Washington Post heard from a number of Obama campaign volunteers from Indiana and Pennsylvania who said that their efforts often resulted in racist language (even directed toward white volunteers), name calling, and lots of doors slammed in faces.

Voters in Muncie, Ind., told Danielle Ross, a 20-year-old white woman who took the year off from college to campaign for Obama, "'I'll never vote for a black person." People just weren't receptive."

One phone bank volunteer charged with calling her 98-percent-white hometown in Pennsylvania, recalled one person saying to her, after vowing to never vote for Obama, "Hang that darky from a tree!"

Later, Obama's headquarter's in Vincennes, Ind., were vandalized. The Obama campaign downplays these incidents, saying that they are isolated and that support has been overwhelmingly positive. True: the man is winning.

CONTINUED »

It's been a long road, y'all. A long hard road filled with combativeness, divisiveness, lies, "misspeaking," media-manufactured scandals, race cards, sex cards, pandering, and foot-in-mouth moments, but after last night, it's finally over. Barack Obama won North Carolina by 16 points, and he lost Indiana, where he was expected to lose by 5-7 points, by fewer than two points. Seeing that there was no way for her to win the nomination by any means that will sit well with a majority of her party, Hillary Clinton has announced that she has gracefully bowed out of the race and will commence supporting Barack Obama's presidential candidacy immediately.

Oh, wait. That was just a dream I had last night. Clinton's still in (it's probably better for Obama that she is such a fighter) and is getting revved up about West Virginia, a shoo-in state for her. Commentators will continue to ask, "Why can't Barack Obama win those white, blue-collar voters? How will that play out in the general election?" They will continue to not ask (or to not ask as much), "Why can Hillary Clinton barely pull 10 percent of the black vote? How will that play out in the general election, especially if she wins the nomination using tactics that, perceived or otherwise, stole the nomination from Barack Obama?"

CONTINUED »

Wherein you, the readers, talk amongst yourselves.

What are you predictions for tomorrow's primaries in Indiana and North Carolina?

This 1992 video of James Carville, George Stephanopolous, and Mickey Kantor, former Bill Clinton administration official and current adviser to Hillary Clinton, has been furiously circulating the blogosphere today. In it, Kantor, discussing election polls, says "Look at Indiana - 42-40. It doesn't matter if we win. Those people are shit. How would you like to be a worthless white nigger?" So far, there's been no repudiation or denouncing from the Hillary Clinton camp, but Kantor told the Huffington Post that he was set up, that he never actually said what it sounds like he said, and that he has never uttered the n-word in his life. Elsewhere on the web, I've read that Kantor actually says "how would you like to be beat by a worthless white nigger," referring to the way the Bush camp viewed Bill Clinton. In which case he has, in fact, uttered the n-word in his life, even if he meant it in a different way. The whole thing sounds insane, and, frankly, unlikely, but as we've seen time and time again, Americans (in this case, Indianans Hoosiers) will believe it if they want to, whether it's true or not. Barack Obama knows this better than anyone.

UPDATE: The director of the War Room, the documentary from which the video was pulled, backs Kantor, saying that the first portion of the quote was taken out of context and the second portion was fabricated. The person who made the Youtube video from the War Room footage maintains that it was not a hoax and that all he did was increase the sound on the portion of the video in which Kantor delivers the alleged quote. In the original footage (fast forward to 4:40) you can't hear what Kantor is really saying.

Wherein you, the readers, talk amongst yourselves.

The U.S. Supreme Court today placed its judicial stamp of approval on an Indiana voting law that requires photo identification at polling places. Opponents of the law say it could disenfranchise "countless elderly, poor, and minority voters." The Indiana primary is on May 6th.

Do you think there's a good justification for a law like this or does it seem like it's designed to keep certain people from voting?

Tony Zirkle, the lunatic U.S. Congress hopeful from Indiana, has some very interesting ideas about segregation. Namely, that it's a good thing we should consider bringing back. Why? Well, lot of black people in his state are in jail or having babies out of wedlock, so he figures it might work to just completely separate the entire race. Sort of like Native Americans on reservations. In his capacity as congressman (if he wins that Republican nomination, which is totally a sure thing after this debacle), he'll commission a congressional study on whether or not it's feasible. It could be too costy, he worries.

On the other hand, he said, maybe it could also save the costs of the crime rate — and reduce claims of racial profiling. Granted, he said, it could take a century for the move to really fall in place.

So how would you divvy up Hispanics?

You can pretty much lump them in with whites, he says.

What about black Latinos whose black roots go back several generations in Latin America? And what about the ever-growing number of mixed races?

“You’d have to let people declare what culture they want to be living in,” Zirkle said.

This is a man truly before his time. Wait, I meant after his time. Way, way after his time. [SBT]

Thanks, KA

• San Francisco officials vow to examine the reasons why the city can't retain black residents. Do they also vow to examine the cost of housing? [USAT]

• A well-off enclave of the very troubled, majority-black Gary, Ind., wants to divorce the city and become an incorporated village. But it doesn't have anything to do with race or class, and how dare you make that suggestion! [CT]

• When anti-racism rallies go wrong… [ES]

• The fact that a reporter thought humor a blog written by a fake Al Sharpton was real says just as much about peoples' perception of the real Al Sharpton as it does the reporters stupidity. [CNET]

• Rihanna said there is absolutely no rivalry between her and Beyonce, but she forgot to mention that it was opposite day. [DS]

• Beyonce is definitely not alone in famously falling onstage. [PC]

• Trinidad police are on a search for dancehall veteran Super Cat for…well, allow him to explain: "I box down the promoter because him wha dis Super Cat. Me ain't come Trinidad fi get mix up in no racism," he told a capacity audience.

• In Indiana, black kids are in foster care at a rate 4 times their population in the state. [SBT]

• A Congolese-born Belgium resident is on a mission to get the publisher of a book in the European classic series Tin Tin removed from the shelves. He said Tin Tin in the Congo is racist and relies on colonial-era stereotypes. [Reuters]

• The Massachusetts supreme court ruled in favor of five black women in a decade-old discrimination suit against the city of Boston. [BG]