Obama

Hit it out of the park. I like John Dickerson’s take: After one of several passages in which he described the troubles of everyday people, he said, “Tonight I say to the American people, to Democrats and Republicans and independents across this great land—enough!” It was the single most emphatic word of his address. Change is all well and good,

Read more

At an earlier, benighted time in our nation’s history, as historian Michael Beschloss pointed out the other night, Southern Democrats walked out of the party convention in protest of an African-American preacher taking the podium. Last night the party nominated an African-American as its standard bearer, a man who will be, must be, the next President of the United States.

Read more

In the September ’08 Jazz Times, there are two letters in response to my column on jazz and politics (pdf here). Both focus on my unsurprising and by now barely controversial endorsement of Barack Obama. The first letter is a classic: Regarding David R. Adler’s recent Solo guest column: Although most jazz devotees may reside on the left, there are

Read more

Sullivan points to this Jed Lewison post on the Obama “dollar bill” remark and McCain’s “race card” accusation. Guess who raised the specter of Obama’s mug replacing Ben Franklin’s on the C-note? McCain, in late June.

As you probably know already, protesters disrupted an Obama speech in Florida and held up a banner saying, “What about the black community, Obama?” Marc Ambinder reports the meat of the exchange here. The thing to note about these protesters is that they do not represent the black community — they represent the Uhuru Movement. Their banner sporting this URL

Read more

“Will we extend our hand to the people in the forgotten corners of this world who yearn for lives marked by dignity and opportunity; by security and justice? Will we lift the child in Bangladesh from poverty, shelter the refugee in Chad, and banish the scourge of AIDS in our time? “Will we stand for the human rights of the

Read more