barack obama

Just watch it, and then send it to all your Jewish friends—even your grandparents in Florida.

http://tinyurl.com/ObamaIsrael

Via AMERICAblog—also, make sure to check out their related post about McCain’s and Palin’s associations with well-known anti-Semites.

As they said, oh just watch it:

So I can quit Firefox, restart my computer, and make it go faster, I present these links that I’ve been sitting on for some time:

• The New York Times rightly supports laws that block enforcement of legal judgments relating to freedom of speech in countries where the freedom of speech is not as legally protected as it is in the United States.
• The LA Times’s Joel Stein on trying to convince your elderly Jewish relatives in Florida to vote for Obama.
• A Republican Party county chairman in New Mexico thinks some racist things about Hispanics, blacks, and Obama.
• Truthdig investigates who is behind the Obsession ‘radical Islam’ DVD.
• Margaret Cho says sexist things about Sarah Palin, gets called on it, posts one of the weirdest defences ever, and promptly gets called on it again.
• This year’s MacArthur Genius from the World of Contemporary Art™ is inexplicable as befits a member of that community.
• Campbell Brown, my new hero, tears the McCain camp a new one over their sexist treatment of Sarah Palin.
• Mike Huckabee thinks John McCain’s I-won’t-go-to-the-debate-because-they-need-me-in-Washington-even-more-oh-wait-no-they-really-didn’t gambit was an enormous error in judgment.
• Finally, Jewish settlers in the West Bank—remember them?—are committing terrorism against their fellow Israelis. Terrific.

What Firefox tabs are eating up your computer’s memory today?

I’m a little bit dismayed by all the talk setting up expectations for the debates in the American presidential election. The media and blogosphere seem to be setting up the expectations that not only will Obama wipe the floor with McCain in their debates, but that Sarah Palin will have her ass absolutely handed to her by Joe Biden. Furthermore, there’s this undercurrent of sexism feeding into this latter expectation, that Joe Biden will have to pull his punches or something, as if the fact that Sarah Palin has a vagina entitles her to special treatment in a debate context. This contrasts with the absolute lack of expectations on the Republican side: Sarah Palin, fresh off her interview with Charlie Gibson, may have stumbled a bit when asked what the Bush Doctrine was, but she didn’t completely crash and burn. So we have impossibly high expectations from the Democrats, compared with laughably low expectations from the Republicans.

As in years past, the Democrats have let themselves get pulled into a no-win situation here. If they succeed at completely trouncing the Republicans in the debates, they (especially Biden) will be painted as bullies who didn’t have the decency to go easy on a woman and a doddering old guy. If they slip slightly below expectations—one small gaffe, or even a sigh, should do it—they will be proclaimed to have “lost” the debates. And this is not unfamiliar territory for Democrats. Simply think of the media’s extremely low bar for George W. Bush in 2000, or the way they set up the dichotomy between Kerry the polished debater and George W. Bush the bumbling idiot in 2004, or the absolute evisceration of John Edwards for mentioning Dick Cheney’s gay daughter in their vice-presidential debate in 2004, and you’ll get the idea. The Democrats are set against an impossibly high standard, while the Republicans get the major benefit of the doubt.

This year it’ll be Obama the Ivy League-educated ultra-articulate orator versus Uncle McCain the lovable old scoundrel, and Biden the 38-year tough-guy debate veteran versus Palin the newbie, fragile but feisty but go-easy-on-her-because-she’s-a-woman. Sure, Obama and Biden will shine during the debates in 2008, but there is no way for these candidates to emerge victorious. All McCain and Palin have to do is show up, and let the media’s expectations of Obama and Biden do the work.

It’s about bloody time. The Obama people are finally taking John McCain to task for championing his “man-of-the-people” bona fides and still believing, against all evidence and logic, that “the fundamentals of the economy are strong” because not one of his seven houses has been reposessed yet. When asked by Politico yesterday how many houses he has, McCain stumbled into this little gem:

“I think — I’ll have my staff get to you,” McCain told Politico in Las Cruces, N.M. “It’s condominiums where — I’ll have them get to you.”

The correct answer is at least four, located in Arizona, California and Virginia, according to his staff. Newsweek estimated this summer that the couple owns at least seven properties.

The man couldn’t (wouldn’t?) answer a question about how many houses he owns. His staff then lowballed the “correct answer”. John Aravosis is right on the money when he says that the Democrats absolutely must capitalize on this:

NOTE TO DEMOCRATS: This is manna from heaven. Run a freaking ad about this, non-stop. Unless of course you think it’s too mean and you just can’t touch it, then we can just have an independent group do it. Oh, that’s right - you killed the independent groups. Never mind. I hear the White House isn’t all it’s cracked up to be anyway.

I’m glad to see that the Democrats actually appear to be listening to this little bit of advice. They came out with an ad about this very quickly—a turnaround of one day, for a change!—and it’s pretty powerful:

About bloody time they did something like this in the time in which they did it. Next step: repeat this meme over and over again. The blogosphere has picked it up (and even started to question whether the number seven is, in fact, too low an “estimate”). The so-called liberal media, which you’d think would have always been more than eager to find indictments like this against the conservative candidate, has slowly started to pick this up. They’ve got to keep going with this. The precise number is less important than the idea: the meme that McCain owns many more houses than you (i.e. the average Joe Schmo) own has the potential to be extremely damaging to McCain—if the Democrats play it right. Use McCain’s own words against him. The audio is available via Politico. Hit McCain hard with it. (Aravosis thinks there ought to be a dance remix.) Hoist him by his own petard. String him up with his own idiocy. And for the love of Pete, don’t stop doing it until Obama gets elected.

As Ben Smith notes, today’s contest for best photo-op is no contest. Compare and contrast the slick, cool, nearly Will-Smith-saving-the-earth-in-ID4-type action hero of the upper photo with the major “hey you kids, get off my lawn”-ness of the lower photo:

The Israeli daily Ha’aretz reports that Haim Ramon, the Vice Premier of Israel, has announced that is holding negotiations with Hamas. Hamas is a Palestinian terrorist organization that does not recognize Israel and daily shoots missiles into its cities with the intention of killing civilians.

So. When will Bush and McCain denounce Israel, just like Bush denounced Barack Obama—on the floor of the Knesset, no less—as an “appeaser” for declaring his intention to talk to America’s enemies? Israel is actually doing it. Where’s the condemnation?

Oh, right. Talking to and “appeasing” terrorists is okay when the American government or its allies does it, but when their political opponents even suggest it, they’re morally equivalent to Hitler.

I feel kind of sorry for the third guy who can’t get a word in edgeways during Chris Matthews’s spectacular dismantlement of right-wing radio host Kevin James. The point is: when you make, or try to defend, incredibly stupid historical comparisons—like Bush’s recent comments to the Israeli Knesset that Barack Obama is an appeaser just like those who tried to appease Hitler before the war—you’d better have a fucking clue what actually happened. It’s not enough simply to yell “appeaser, appeaser, appeaser” and hope nobody notices that you are a complete ignoramus, primarily because it’s historically and intellectually irresponsible, but also because one day you’ll be on TV and get your ass owned by Chris Matthews.

Via TPM/Veracifier and Think Progress.

NARAL, one of the largest and most influential pro-choice groups in the United States, has endorsed Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination for President. Needless to say, this has set off quite a firestorm in certain circles—just scroll down the comments on the NARAL blog post announcing the endorsement to get a sense of some of the reaction: some people appear to feel personally wronged by this endorsement, whining that they’ve been betrayed, vowing they’ll never contribute another dollar to NARAL, and so on and so forth—ad nauseam, actually. At Pandagon, Amanda Marcotte hit the nail on the head: “You’d think they endorsed, oh, McCain or someone anti-choice.”

This level of disappointment is perfectly ridiculous. Both Clinton and Obama are strong on choice, strong on women’s issues, and strong Democrats. Yet the race for the Democratic nomination has gone on way too long and is, thank goodness, almost over. The Democratic Party should start to corral its support and start the battle against McCain. Clinton said today that it would be a “terrible mistake” if voters chose McCain over Obama, a muted recognition of the fact that earlier comments she made implying McCain’s preferability over Obama may not have been in the general interests of the party. And that’s what it’s really about at this point: the interests of a party that should be focussed on beating the other party. The Republican Party has been there for a while already; the Democratic Party is lagging far behind.

The astute reader will note that I have not said Clinton should drop out. On the contrary, there are several compelling reasons for Clinton to stay in the race, at least until the primary elections are over, the most convincing of which is that it would look extremely bad for Clinton to drop out and then win several of the remaining primaries, especially Kentucky, which she has been predicted to win for a long time now. However, the Democrats as a group need to focus on what is going to bring victory to the party in November, and right now that means starting to coalesce behind one presidential candidate. NARAL’s endorsement is right in line with this, as is John Edwards’s recent endorsement of Obama. And if you’re a Clinton supporter who is too affected by the sour grapes of not being in a winning position, let alone not winning NARAL’s endorsement, chill out. It’s not personal.

Via the Slog: the cutest thing ever, truly, is two four-year-olds debating the pros and cons of a certain two Democrats. It’s like that old Daily Show segment in which inane things said by TV pundits would be reenacted by children, but this one is definitely sui generis.

I’ve been horribly busy the last few days with a research project—it is done for the moment, however, so in the time in between now and when I can calm down enough to write a ‘real’ post, here’s a list of interesting tabs that have been open in my Firefox since a few days ago:

• Sometimes I think my viola-playing belongs in the Really Terrible Orchestra.
• Microsoft executives are not surprised to learn how awful Windows Vista really is.
• Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman to be nominated for Vice President and current Clinton hench-person, believes that Obama has got this far only because he’s a black man.
• Some amusing British humour about the U.S. presidential election.
• Required reading: Daniel Gordis’s most recent dispatch regarding how Hayyim Nachman Bialik would be mortified by the State of Israel today.
• Iraq really didn’t have WMDs—can you friggin’ believe it?
• Chris Beam’s excellent insight that the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal is more likely to harm the Democratic Party than Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.

Now I can close all those tabs, and Firefox can stop memory-leaking (ha). Hat-tips all round.

In an op-ed in today’s LA Times, Aaron Miller takes a stab at explaining why large segments of the American Jewish population seem to have it in for Barack Obama—or anybody else who can even be remotely connected with criticism of Israel:

Don’t get me wrong. Jews—and yes, I am one of them—worry for a living. Their history compels them to and to be always vigilant. Yet in America, where they have achieved a level of security, acceptance and power unparalleled in their history, their existential worries paradoxically seem to have grown even greater. When Jimmy Carter writes a book—a bad book, incidentally—comparing Zionism to apartheid, many American Jews go crazy. When two university professors, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, write another bad book—about what they call “the Israel lobby”—many Jews react as if the sky is falling.

Essentially, what’s going on is a severe overreaction to any perceived threats against Israel. Israel is equated with the Jewish people both there and in the Diaspora. Never mind that the ultra-Orthodox elements in Israel, which have de facto control over the country’s civil life, hate—to the point of considering Not Jewish—liberal Jews, or even Orthodox Jews who don’t wear the right hat. (In case you missed it, Gershom Gorenberg had an excellent piece in last Sunday’s NY Times Magazine demonstrating the extent of this ultra-Orthodox control and craziness when it comes to ‘proving’ your Jewishness for the purpose of marriage in or immigration to Israel.) Back to Miller:

This “us versus them” mentality still runs deep, and it is particularly harmful when it comes to the Arab-Israeli issue. That conflict is not some kind of morality play in which the forces of evil do battle against the forces of light. It is a conflict in which both sides have legitimate needs and requirements and do both good and bad things in pursuit of them.

This point, unfortunately, is correct in its essence. However, as we’ve learned time and time again, nuance simply doesn’t sell. And if your message is at all nuanced—not 100% rah-rah Israel, all Arabs are terrorists, etc.—then you are, by definition, an enemy not only of Israel but of the Jewish people. How pathetic is the discourse, how sad is the conversation? There is neither discourse nor conversation, because the attitude is ‘us versus them’—nuance equals betrayal.

With John Edwards out on the Democratic side and Rudy Giuliani out on the Republican side, this leaves only a few candidates remaining in the party primaries in the U.S. presidential race. Obama is looking increasingly strong, having raised $32 million from over 170,000 new donors in January alone, Romney is looking more and more like the doofus we all know he is, Hillary is wisely telling Bill to tone it down for fear he lost South Carolina for her, and the McCain train looks like it’s leaving the station, to the chagrin of much of the American right-wing. This is looking increasingly like a Hillary-Obama race that will be decided on Super Tuesday, versus McCain on the Republican side. But lest we overlook the positive demographic side of all this: the Democratic nominee is now guaranteed not to be a white male! As Jon Stewart put it on last night’s A Daily Show:

Edwards’ departure leaves the Democratic nomination down to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, which means that the Founding Fathers finally have a winner in their ‘How Long Will It Take Our Nation To Nominate A Non-White Male’ betting pool. Oh, I can’t wait to find out who is the winner. Ladies and gentlemen, George Mason of Virginia correctly guessed—two hundred and nineteen years! Congratulations, Georgey!

In related news from the world of primaries, Slate’s ‘Explainer’ column has an excellent explanation of what happens to Edwards’s delegates at the Democratic National Convention now. And it will be interesting to watch what happens with the first ever global primary for Democrats living abroad, which will be electing state-level delegates to be seated and vote at the Convention on behalf of the millions of Democratic voters residing outside the United States. This will be fascinating on both a political and a technological level: will it even ‘work’—however we define that—and what, if any, will be its long-term effects?

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the solar system, Ron Paul’s campaign is, apparently, still going strong, and America is still, apparently, deeply in love with him. In fact, he is, apparently, the only Republican even bothering to show up in some states, which shows that he at least thinks that he can reciprocate that love to large portions of the country. Just check out some of his vastly impressive press releases if you aren’t prepared to take my word for it. And from even further reaches of our solar system, Ralph ‘I-didn’t-cost-Gore-the-election-but-Bush-and-Gore-cost-me-the-election’ Nader is thinking about throwing his hat into the ring once again. (Surely it’s no coincidence, as Chris Beam points out, that this is coming to light right after Edwards, the Democrat whom Nader had endorsed, dropped out of the race.) I can only sigh and wonder who’s funding Nader this time around.

Eugene Robinson has a very interesting piece in today’s Truthdig that wonders what exactly the deal is with Bill Clinton these days. Clinton, by far the most popular living ex-president, has been joining the attacks on his wife Hillary’s opponent for the Democratic nomination for President, Barack Obama, to such a fierce degree that Obama recently told an interviewer, ‘I feel like I’m running against both Clintons.’ The fundamental problem, Robinson suggests, is that Obama is peddling the message—or more importantly, the Clintons see him as peddling the message—that Bill Clinton’s accomplishments during his eight years of tenure as President were insufficient, or have been reversed by the Bush administration, or never really achieved much anyway in the way of actually uniting people. Bill Clinton seems to be taking this as a personal affront and is responding in kind, going after Obama himself, the media (for what the Clinton camp sees as biased pro-Obama media coverage), and by extension quite a large segment of the American electorate.

Furthermore, at least some of Obama’s appeal is tapping into the feelings of some Democrats that sure, Clinton was great, but do the people of the United States really want another four or eight years of triangulation, centrism, and the appearance of two straight all-in-the-family dynasties? Going a rather unfortunate step further, Republican author and ex-Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan suggested over the weekend that ‘Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton’ is a ’sickness’—a feeling she ascribed to ’so many people’, with no foundation at all. While she may be hyperbolic in her language, I have to wonder to what extent this issue is present and underlying much of what we’re seeing happen in the Democratic primaries, and what impact it will have on the general election come November. Expect more to be made of this as Bill Clinton’s involvement in Hillary’s campaign grows, along with his willingness to play the bad cop.

If New Hampshire doesn’t go well for Hillary, which seems more and more likely now that the polls are consistently finding double-digit leads for Obama, you can bet she’s going to go through with some sort of shake-up to her campaign staff, most likely involving replacing the weird and ever-reliable-to-make-your-campaign-fail strategist Mark Penn. But it probably won’t be as drastic as this:

In what some party insiders are calling a Hail Mary bid to win Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton today attempted to repackage herself as a black man. … Speaking at a rally in Manchester, N.H., Clinton thanked her supporters for “keeping it real” and promoted her just-released autobiography, The Bodacicty of Hope. “This election is about whether or not America is ready to elect a black man president of the United States,” she said. “I believe I am that black man.”

As Little Buttercup once famously noted, “The poor bumboat woman has gipsy blood in her veins, and she can read destinies! … There is a change in store for you … be prepared!” And I fear that though a mystic tone she borrows, Hillary will learn the truth with sorrow. Here today, and gone tomorrow.

Yes I know—that is so!

The Iowa caucuses are over, and with Barack Obama’s and Mike Huckabee’s rather stunning and convincing wins over the rest of the Democratic and Republican fields, respectively, I though I would add my admittedly paltry two cents to the fray—what’s the blogosphere for, anyway?

The winners: Obama and Huckabee rightly deserve the praise for winning by such impressive margins, and at least in Obama’s case a clear front-runner has emerged and everybody else is playing catch-up. John Edwards, however, made a strong showing, and finished second—barely ahead of Hillary, but the only thing that registers with many people is the ordinal numbers in front of the names. He will definitely also be a factor in the upcoming weeks. The other clear winner is John “100 years in Iraq is fine by me” McCain, who seems to be getting a hell of a lot of media attention from various sources that for whatever reason simply love to fawn on him. He didn’t do very well in the caucuses, but he’s going to have lots of media momentum on his side.

The sort-of winners: Mike Huckabee may have won the caucuses by a 9% margin, but the Republican side is still extremely muddled. Giuliani finished sixth in the caucuses, except he had never really paid much attention to Iowa at all, and still definitely has the wherewithal to do well in many other states, especially those that hold their primary elections on Super Tuesday. The other person who had some kind of victory was Ron Paul, who managed to pull out a whopping 10%. This from a guy everyone wishes would just go away. Giuliani came in sixth with 3.5%, and he’s still getting invited to Fox News’s debate, whereas fifth-place Ron Paul is still being unceremoniously excluded. Ron Paul won’t win the Republican nomination, but be on the lookout for a possible third-party bid that could Naderize the Republican side of the 2008 elections. He certainly has the fundraising apparatus and crazy robot-like supporters—almost à la another erstwhile also-ran and his cult-like following—to make a fight of it.

The losers: Mitt Romney doesn’t come out of this looking good, but Hillary Clinton, obviously, is the big loser of the night. Her whole campaign was based on the inevitability of her candidacy, and now that approach is obviously broken and in need of some serious (and fast) rethinking. So she’s now reduced to insinuating that Obama is ‘too liberal‘ and that he has has associations with left-wing intellectuals. Err, the 1920s called; they want their rhetoric back. (Actually, it wasn’t historically just rhetoric: sometimes it was blatant xenophobia too.)

The whole primary/caucus process in the United States is silly, with various states wielding disproportionate influence. Complaining about this is old hat, however, and there’s really nothing new to be said about it. Nothing is going to change until the abolition of federalism and the recognition of all citizens of the great ‘democracy’ of the United States as truly equal—not just those who happen to live within arbitrary boundaries that for stupid historical reasons dictate that they can proceed to dictate to the rest of the country who’s going to be on their ballots in November.

So yeah, look for that.