Overnight Open Thread

Open | Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 10:45:00 pm PDT

It’s a good idea for diplomats to keep their word in small matters. It makes the later complete betrayals more of a surprise.

— John Barnes

Fish or Pole?

Images | Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 6:27:50 pm PDT

Some very cool politically informed graphics from design student Heather Mantovani, at Andy Rutledge’s place: Design in the Sociopolitical Arena.

And Now for Some Tom Waits

Video | Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 6:07:27 pm PDT

Youtube Video

I’d sell your heart to the junkman baby
For a buck, for a buck
If you’re looking for someone to pull you out of that ditch
You’re out of luck, you’re out of luck

The ship is sinking
The ship is sinking
The ship is sinking

There’s a leak, there’s a leak, in the boiler room
The poor, the lame, the blind
Who are the ones that we kept in charge?
Killers, thieves, and lawyers

God’s away, God’s away,
God’s away on business. Business.
God’s away, God’s away,
God’s away on business. Business.

Digging up the dead with a shovel and a pick
It’s a job, it’s a job
Bloody moon rising with a plague and a flood
Join the mob, join the mob

It’s all over
It’s all over
It’s all over

There’s a leak, there’s a leak, in the boiler room
The poor, the lame, the blind
Who are the ones that we kept in charge?
Killers, thieves, and lawyers

God’s away, God’s away, God’s away
On business. Business.
God’s away, God’s away,
On business. Business.

Goddamn there’s always such a big temptation
To be good, to be good
There’s always free cheddar in a mousetrap, baby
It’s a deal, it’s a deal

God’s away, God’s away, God’s away
On business. Business.
God’s away, God’s away, God’s away
On business. Business.

I narrow my eyes like a coin slot baby,
Let her ring, let her ring

God’s away, God’s away,
God’s away on business.
Business...

Sowell: The Real Obama

Opinion | Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 5:32:06 pm PDT

Thomas Sowell says it all:

Jeremiah Wright, Father Michael Pfleger, William Ayers and Antoin Rezko are not just people who happened to be at the same place at the same time as Barack Obama. They are people with whom he chose to ally himself for years, and with some of whom some serious money changed hands.

Some gave political support, and some gave financial support, to Obama’s election campaigns, and Obama in turn contributed either his own money or the taxpayers’ money to some of them. That is a familiar political alliance— but an alliance is not just an “association” from being at the same place at the same time.

Obama could have allied himself with all sorts of other people. But, time and again, he allied himself with people who openly expressed their hatred of America. No amount of flags on his campaign platforms this election year can change that.

Spiegel Columnist: Sarah Palin is a Witless Racist

Opinion | Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 2:07:37 pm PDT

Article after article today denouncing Sarah Palin and John McCain, but especially Sarah Palin, for “injecting race” into the campaign.

By which they invariably mean: bringing up Barack Obama’s troubling long-term associations with hardcore radicals of one type or another.

Germany’s Spiegel Online gets into the act too with a venomous article by former TIME reporter Peter Ross Range: The Lone Ranger: Is Sarah Palin Playing with Fire?

In her witless way, Sarah Palin has re-injected race into the presidential campaign at just the time when it seemed to be sliding into insignificance. After all, you can hardly attach a racial narrative to the global financial crisis. Furthermore, polls have been suggesting a surprisingly high degree of acceptance by whites of a black in the White House.

Some commentators think “brownness” (immigrants) has replaced blackness as the new racial scarecrow in American politics. I think it is also true that as people have gotten used to Obama, they increasingly see not a black man, but a post-racial person (white and black, by birth) who calmly and coolly embodies the swirling ethnic mix that is modern America.

But Palin, with plenty of abetment from McCain, has gotten it going again with the theme that Obama “is not a man who sees America like you and I see America." She’s selling Obama not as the black, but as the other. This obviously can appeal to racial fears and antagonisms.

Financial Crisis Watch

Business | Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 12:42:05 pm PDT

The Dow index has not climbed any more after yesterday’s wild ascent; it’s holding pretty much even today. And the government will be buying shares in several top banks to ease the credit crunch. Is that a good idea?

Jesse Jackson: 'Zionists Who Control America' On the Way Out

Politics | Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 10:04:25 am PDT

Amir Taheri talks with Jesse Jackson at the World Policy Forum in Evian, France: The O Jesse Knows.

Jesse says Barack Obama is going to really change things in America.

PREPARE for a new America: That’s the message that the Rev. Jesse Jackson conveyed to participants in the first World Policy Forum, held at this French lakeside resort last week.

He promised “fundamental changes” in US foreign policy - saying America must “heal wounds” it has caused to other nations, revive its alliances and apologize for the “arrogance of the Bush administration.”

The most important change would occur in the Middle East, where “decades of putting Israel’s interests first” would end.

Jackson believes that, although “Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades” remain strong, they’ll lose a great deal of their clout when Barack Obama enters the White House.

“Obama is about change,” Jackson told me in a wide-ranging conversation. “And the change that Obama promises is not limited to what we do in America itself. It is a change of the way America looks at the world and its place in it.”

WaPo Columnist: John McCain, Far Right Extremist

Politics | Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 8:29:18 am PDT

This is where the mainstream media has been headed ever since the nomination of Barack Obama as the Democratic candidate; E. J. Dionne is the latest journalist to claim that any and all criticism of Obama is by definition racist. But he takes it an extra step, saying that John McCain represents the reemergence of the far right.

Yes, really. John McCain, far right extremist. Wow. Meanwhile, Barack Obama associates with people who scream “God damn America,” and with people who are guilty of bombing the US Capitol, and gets a complete pass.

Are we witnessing the reemergence of the far right as a power in American politics? Has John McCain, inadvertently perhaps, become the midwife of a new movement built around fear, xenophobia, racism and anger?

McCain has clearly become uneasy with some of the forces that have gathered around him. He has begun to insist, against the sometimes loud protests from his crowds, that Barack Obama is, among things, a “decent person.”

Yet McCain’s own campaign is playing with powerful extremist themes to denigrate Obama. When his running mate, Sarah Palin, first brought up Obama’s association with 1960s radical Bill Ayers, who has become a centerpiece of McCain’s attacks, she accused Obama of “palling around with terrorists.” What other “terrorists” was she thinking about?

Since Obama was a child when Ayers was part of the Weather Underground, and since even Republicans have served on boards with Ayers, this is classic guilt by association.

Notice how many mainstream journalists shamelessly parrot Obama’s talking points about William Ayers, word for word.