David Adler

David Carr reports on Rage Against the Machine’s protests at both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions. According to Rage and its delusional followers, there is no difference between Obama and McCain. I suppose they’re waiting around for the Democratic candidate to champion Che and Mumia and the writing of crackpots like William Blum, as Rage’s website does. Way to

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In case you missed the last one… Sumi Tonooka Trio, Long Ago Today (Arc) Donny McCaslin, Recommended Tools (Greenleaf) Ted Nash, The Mancini Project (Palmetto) Pandelis Karayorgis, Betwixt (Hatology) Blink., The Epidemic of Ideas (Thirsty Ear) Mark Weinstein, Straight No Chaser (Jazzheads)

Timothy Noah explains: “[Alaska] is a state that preaches right-wing libertarianism while it practices middle-class socialism.” “A pit bull with lipstick? I’d describe Palin as a hog who recommends diet books while feeding at the trough.”

William Jelani Cobb asks: “Why it is that a group of progressives would spend about 40 minutes discussing how to critique Barack and virtually no time discussing how to elect him?” Perhaps the most biting irony is a kind of reverse affirmative action, where Obama seems to face a higher bar for support than the white candidates who preceded him.

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You’ve got to hand it to Sarah Palin: she’s got the brass balls to try to put the Iraq war in the plus column for McCain and the Republicans, trashing Obama on the campaign trail on the issue of the troop surge. As I argued here, the Iraq war did not begin in early 2007, it began in early 2003,

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In his nomination speech last week, Barack Obama concluded with remarks about rebuilding a sense of “common purpose” in America. You could brush this off as mushy noble talk, but in fact it’s one of the key strengths of the Obama campaign — the drive to frame old problems in new ways and move this country out of the tired

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