The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes, natives and immigrants, Christians and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.

It's a time for us as the hip-hop generation to step up and say, we put this agenda out and now we want to see where people really stand on it and we're calling you to task. You can't take us for granted anymore.

'Why are we depending on these other candidates who will tell us whatever we want to hear, why don't we start our own people? So what we saw was a lot of people running for office,

I certainly acknowledge and appreciate what the Civil Righters have done, but we younger African Americans are saying now, loudly, the jig is up and it is time for you to go, especially if you have not created hope and plans of action for our communities. The days of marching and protesting without a clear purpose are over. The days of voting for someone just because they are Black are over. Indeed, the multicultural legion of young Americans who've flocked to Obama's campaign suggest that we want leadership that builds bridges, not be stuck in the rhetoric and realities of the past.

I respect people's reactions -- I'm just trying to as calmly and as clearly as possible talk about what this image means and what it was intended to mean and what I think most people will see -- when they think it through -- that it means. The fact is, it's not a satire about Obama - it's a satire about the distortions and misconceptions and prejudices about Obama.

There seem to be two possibilities. The first: they truly find the idea depicted in the image so ridiculous that they couldn't conceive of anyone taking it seriously. However, if that were the case, there'd be no need for the satire in the first place. Attempting to satirize it acknowledges the idea's prevalence.

The other possibility is that somewhere, deep in the recesses of their upper east and west side white minds, lurks a restive "fear of black." To provide such an image without context is to accept its message to some degree. No similar cartoon would have ever appeared about a white candidate.

Said one voter, "I think a person who owns a pet is a more compassionate person - caring, giving, trustworthy. I like pet owners."

On this Fourth of July, I will be eating hot dogs. While I was trying to fit in as an Indian immigrant child throughout the 1970's, they represented the quintessential American food. I begged my mother to let me have them for dinner every night instead of chicken curry and rice. She nixed the hotdogs but sometimes allowed spaghetti and meatballs -- straight from a can. Hotdogs were "invented" by German immigrants serving their traditional sausages in the hustling streets of the new world, and spaghetti, everyone knows, came from Italy. If I had been celebrating Independence Day 150 years ago, however, neither would have been on the menu. In those days, Germans and Italians weren't considered Americans, or even white. When they fought over the most lucrative street corner for food vendors in the 1880's, the press reported these incidents as "race riots."

I'll be sharing this holiday with a group of restaurant workers, largely immigrants. Along with the hotdogs, we'll have tacos, samosas, falafel. According to one side of immigration debate, we can keep our goodies to ourselves. America doesn't want them, or us.

"No disrespect to my man Barack, but I f**ked with John McCain. He greeted me like a god."

"..my mama is about to have surgery that I gotta pay for out of my pocket because she can't get insurance. I don't really feel McCain. It ain't just because Barack is Black; he can make change. Just like Bush equals recession, Barack equals progression. I really feel that, all bullsh-- aside. He's gotta come in and keep it right."