Decision 2008
Back to life, back to reality
I’m back from a few days in Florida with an unreliable web connection, so I’m just getting the news about the passing of Jimmy Giuffre. Darcy has the best blog roundup, of course. Not sure if anyone else has mentioned it, but one of the least discussed items in the Giuffre/Bley/Swallow catalog is Fly Away Little Bird, recorded in 1992
Hillary on Iran
John Aravosis gets it right: So in the space of 12 hours, Hillary has twice suggested that she’d nuke Iran, but now her staff is saying that she didn’t mean to imply that she would. Maybe she’s just 60 years old and tired, like her husband said she was when she repeatedly lied about Bosnia for four months. So long
More China-bashing please
My feelings toward Hillary Clinton and her campaign couldn’t be a lot dimmer, but I have to credit her for an anti-China line so firm that it caused one of her advisors to quit. Richard Baum of UCLA’s Center for Chinese Studies accuses Hillary of taking “the low road” on the issue, but she’s done exactly the opposite. On the
Hillary’s glass house
Oh my goodness, of course, she’s just being helpful. By rehashing the GOP’s phony links between Obama and the Weather Underground, she’s just pointing out that Obama might be headed for trouble in the fall. So better to back-stab him now. That way, the road is clear for right-wingers to flog Hillary’s old ties to a Communist-run Berkeley law firm
Crouch on Obama
An exceptionally moving comment on the Obama speech from Stanley Crouch. And here, from earlier on. Stanley’s no right-winger, as is so often assumed. (No, he does not note Wright’s appearance on Wynton Marsalis’s The Majesty of the Blues).
Wright stuff
Obama’s Philadelphia speech is destined for the American history classrooms of tomorrow (if there will be such things). And it has generated a wave of responses nearly as fascinating as the speech itself, not least of all in the nascent entity called the jazz blogosphere. Which would seem to refute the idea that jazz and its minions have ceased to
Obama on Wright
Here in Philadelphia, blocks from where I sit, Barack Obama has just delivered a powerful speech [update: video here] on the complexities of race and racism in America, and the nuanced reality of his relationship with pastor Jeremiah Wright. I fear his words will fall on cynical, deaf ears, but he has done his best — not in an attempt to
“Hussein”
Things are falling to pieces in Albany, the capital of my home state, as we witness one of the most spectacular political downfalls in recent history. But I’m posting a quick comment on a different scandal — far less important, but worth noting. I’m speaking of Congressman Steve King’s convoluted remarks on the middle name of Barack Obama. King plays