Obama
Reacting
~ It’s important to have a hard-nosed look at the emerging Obama administration. What no one should accept is Ralph Nader, a 74-year-old white man, suggesting that Obama might turn out to be “Uncle Tom for the giant corporations.” [Update: I should have noted that Nader’s ancestry is Lebanese.] It’s not the first time Nader has lobbed racial rhetoric at
Roy’s purity
Novelist and activist Arundhati Roy, easily one of the world’s most overrated political thinkers, has no problem supporting the Iraqi insurgency, Maoist thugs in jungles of India, and Pakistan-backed militants in Kashmir. But she cannot bring herself to support Barack Obama. Somehow, some way, the Obama campaign will crawl on without her help.
On Message: Afghanistan
As I’ve remarked twice, the McCain-Palin camp has launched specious attacks on Obama for allegedly impugning American troops in Afghanistan, when Obama was in fact calling for increased American troops in Afghanistan. Palin went so far as to call Obama’s comments on civilian casualties “untrue.” So it’s interesting to read John Burns’s account of Afghan war policy in today’s NY
“We meet at a moment of great uncertainty”
[Click to enlarge photo.] Barack Obama happened to be in Philadelphia for a series of rallies on the very day I was scheduled to canvass. So I spent my Saturday morning as part of a big, enthralled crowd and heard him speak in the flesh. (I caught the entire thing on video but the file’s too long for YouTube, so
Philly bound
I’m heading back to Philly in a few hours, to catch Anthony Braxton’s two shows and to canvass for Obama in the white working-class area of Tacony, right near my cruddy storage space. A strange part of town. The owner of the storage warehouse has McCain stickers plastered all over his office. So this should be interesting. At least the
Ayers PS
Inevitably, a “Support Bill Ayers” website has sprung up, with over a thousand academics signing on to a statement that Ayers “participated passionately in the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s, as did hundreds of thousands of Americans.” Matt Yglesias and Michael Tomasky strenuously object, and good for them. As I’ve already argued, Ayers and his comrades did
The Ayers issue at a glance
Sarah Palin, unable to make the case for her own fitness to hold high office, has kicked off the widely expected, 11th-hour smear campaign against Obama as a friend of terrorists, namely ex-Weather Underground leader William Ayers. On the trail Palin mentioned this NY Times piece by Scott Shane, ignoring of course Shane’s main conclusion: that the Obama-Ayers connection is tenuous