Do we have the second American civil war? Will some states want to secede from the Unitedness of it all? Will Bush hang in there for an extended second term 'in the national interest'? Will Mugabe ask for asylum?

Add to these nice concerns the impact of the recession-which-isnt-really-here-yet but will bite in the fall and the inevitable global tensions of a turbulent Beijing Olympics and you'd reckon on the message for 2009 being a right royal state of disunion. Get into gold or cash. Soonest. . . read more

So why does Hillary persist? Because she hasn't abandoned her aspiration for the White House. Not in 2008, but for 2012. Here's the perverse logic at work. If Obama defeats McCain in November, it will take an act of treachery beyond anything even the Clintons have ever conjured from their grimoire of political demonology for Hillary to challenge him in 2012. She will be 69 in 2016, almost ready to move into one of the Beverly Nursing Homes, owned by a company she once represented as a corporate lawyer, aggressively protecting the bottom line against such extravagances as healthy meals, clean sheets and proper medical care for the elderly.

Hillary Clinton is the prisoner of an unimpeachable mathematics. So she makes the most of a remorseless situation by doing what the Clintons do best: commit political fratricide. Quite literally, in this case, by knocking off a brother. In order to realize her vaulting ambition, Hillary must mortally wound Obama as candidate in the fall race against John McCain so that she can run against McCain in 2012. [More] . . read more

When I say your whiteness is showing this is what I mean: You claim that your opposition to Obama is an act of gender solidarity, in that women (and their male allies) need to stand up for women in the face of the sexist mistreatment of Clinton by the press. On this latter point - the one about the importance of standing up to the media for its often venal misogyny - you couldn't be more correct. As the father of two young girls who will have to contend with the poison of patriarchy all their lives, or at least until such time as that system of oppression is eradicated, I will be the first to join the boycott of, or demonstration on, whatever media outlet you choose to make that point.

But on the first part of the above equation - the part where you insist voting against Obama is about gender solidarity - you are, for lack of a better way to put it, completely full of crap. And what's worse is that at some level I suspect you know it. Voting against Senator Obama is not about gender solidarity. It is an act of white racial bonding, and it is grotesque. [More] . . read more

Senator John McCain is a poster boy for the pathologies of the military brat. Born in the Panama Canal Zone, he attended twenty schools in his nomadic childhood. "The place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi," is how he shuts up critics of his carpetbagging, but he is making their point: Senator McCain's loyalty is not to any particular American place but rather to a bureaucratic institution (the military) and an abstraction (the American Empire)...

The Democrats are no more connected to particular places than is McCain. Hillary Clinton's rootlessness became a national joke in her 2000 U.S. Senate campaign to represent New York, a state in which she had never lived. Wearing a Yankees cap was about as far as she went to assert her ersatz New Yorkness. Barack Obama, lauded as the "world candidate," was born in Hawaii, a state that is only in the union because of its military significance. Raised also in Indonesia and at various times resident in Los Angeles, New York City, and finally Chicago, Obama is a "cosmopolitan"...

Why does this matter? What's wrong with electing competent but rootless people to public office? Because just as one cannot love the "human race" before one loves particular human beings, neither can one love "the world" unless he first achieves a deep understanding of his own little piece of that world. [More] . . read more

At the Victory Column in Berlin's Tiergarten, Obama extracted Old Glory from the burn-pile and gave Brand America a desperately needed shot of adrenaline. 200,000 ecstatic Germans jammed the streets in what turned out to be the political shindig of the year. Many of them were waving American flags and chanting, "Obama, Obama, Obama". It was like Jack Kennedy had risen from his moldy sepulcher and made his way across the pond for one last rousing ovation. Obama has the very same affect on crowds. Its a gift and he knows how to use it to great advantage...

What can we say about Obama's oratory skills that hasn't already been said? He is one of those unique characters who knows how to tap into the collective psyche and put them under his spell. He is the closest thing to a Pied Piper we've seen in the last half century. Whatever one thinks of his politics, his speeches are a welcome reprieve from the simian blabbering of President Dimwit. [More] . . read more

I DON'T WANT A PRESIDENT THAT THE REPUBLICANS LIKE. I don't want to make nice with them, as Obama always says. I want to have them tried for war crimes and put in jail for subverting democracy and the Constitution. Obama's wife built her fortune evicting poor people from their homes if they couldn't pay their inflated hospital bills. And he had the nerve to say about Edwards "do we want another trial lawyer in the White House?"

Obama has been absent for more votes in the Senate than present and when he is there, he usually votes "present"; not for or against. He will not make a real stand on anything. He uses the world "change" like Rudi Giuliani used 9/11. What change? What will he change? Let's see some concrete substance, not just catch phrases, sound bites. Saying the word change a lot does not make it happen. What's the change? No more Bush? McCain will beat him and it will be the end of America. I think it already is. What's next? Dancing with the Stars or American Idol? You would think America would have learned where smugness and arrogance leads. He has no humility. He is cocky and brash. He is the perfect president for the dumbed down Americans that love him, but he will lose. The media has been pushing for him from day one, because they are told to by their bosses Murdoch, etc. Why? Why does the media love Obama? Because he can't beat a Republican thug. [More Doglove]  . . read more

My criticism of Palin should not be construed as uncritical acceptance of Obama. Needless to say, I find Obama's religious pandering repulsive. The suspicion that he is pandering, out of obvious necessity, and not quite as religious as he makes out, is somewhat comforting, however. But even if Obama were precisely as religious as he appears, he is not a Creationist, Rapture-Ready blockhead. Palin, by all appearances, seems to be one. This is a difference worth noting. Whatever you may think of his politics, Obama is very intelligent and reasonably well educated. Palin thinks the universe is 6000 years old...

So, let me simply declare that I would be overjoyed to have a qualified woman in the White House. I would, likewise, be overjoyed to have a qualified African American in the White House. In fact, I would be overjoyed to have a qualified WASP man in the White House. I will be guardedly optimistic to have a very smart (and somewhat qualified) Barack Obama in the White House. And I would be frankly terrified to have a religious bumpkin like Sarah Palin in the White House. I think you should share this last conviction. . . read more

More important, nowhere in the Constitution or in any other public document that frames the government of the United States is there mention that the president, a senator, a secretary of defense or any other federal official should have served in the armed forces. Military service can be ennobling, but there is no evidence that military service confers greater moral authority on a soldier over matters pertaining to war and peace.

Perhaps this explains why Americans automatically blame politicians for whatever is wrong — and politicians are rarely blameless. However, the record shows that whereas bad political judgment in war can often be rescued through effective military leadership, the reverse is rarely true... No, Obama needs no help from former generals or from anyone sporting medals to win in November. [More] . . read more

Bush and his neocon allies have loosed the dogs of war on the fiery Chicago preacher not because he represents a danger to anyone. That's absurd. Wright, we are told, has been making remarks such as "god damn America" for years. It's only since Senator Barack Obama has become a frontrunner that Obama's opponents elected to use Rev. Wright against him. It's their way of attempting to tear down the only one of the three presidential candidates that opposed Bush's war. It is Bush that deserves censure, not the minister.

And may we have the temerity to inquire what Reverend Wright is so angry about? The answer in part is that he is ticked off at America's imperialist foreign policy, its violations of international law, its role as a disturber of the peace. Indeed, Wright is part of a long and honorable tradition of Americans who told their government off when their government was, in fact, dead wrong, as it has been on many occasions. Such men and women loved their country enough to expect better of it. [More] . . read more

Said ambitious, wealthy white woman worked as an attorney right out of college and quickly became a partner in one of Arkansas' most prestigious (at the time) law firms. She has a net worth of over $109 million - all garnered in the last eight years. Before that she claimed to be some $7 million in debt due to legal bills. Her family net worth is over 100 times that of the "elitist" she scorns.

Sen. Barack Obama received his appellation from Sen. Hillary Clinton after he made the point that many of America's white, permanent poor, working underclass are bitter about their economic circumstances and have a culture heavy on guns and religion. Hell, yes, they're bitter. Good paying manufacturing jobs have all but disappeared from the American heartland -­ most lost due to one-sided, corporate-friendly trade deals instituted on Bill Clinton's watch. Most of the jobs have gone to the very countries where Bill Clinton has made many of those $109 millions pulling strings. Rarely a day goes by without another revelation of Bill Clinton taking big money from some of the worst anti-labor human rights offenders out there. [More] . . read more