In any event, now we know what Obama was talking about when he preached his daily sermon on “hope” and “change.” You thought he was talking about peace in Iraq, health care for everyone, and other leftist nonsense. In reality, Brother Obama hopes to change all of you into evangelicals. He and George Bush are old pals. God told George to invade Iraq. What will God tell Brother Obama?...

I wonder if Brother Obama has forgotten a theological issue that led Protestants and Catholics to slaughter each other with astonishing efficiency during Europe’s religious wars, which occurred a relatively short time ago. Are we saved by our faith or by our faith and works? The opposing answers to that question provided a convenient excuse for carnage. The underlying motives for the carnage were, of course, what they always are — wealth and power. Today, a new Thirty Years’ War, or maybe longer, seems well underway in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Brother Obama, we’ve had enough presidential theology. Feed the hungry. End the war. [More] . . read more

Increasingly, Clinton is operating in a virtual reality programmed by her pollster Mark Penn during his downtime from working for the butchers of Colombia. Adhering to Penn's fatal calculus, Clinton has endeavored to re-segregate the Democratic Party electorate into demographic segments and then pitted them against each other. The Clinton campaign has intentionally inflamed these simmering antagonisms: black versus Hispanic, black versus white, black versus older women, white collar versus blue collar, young versus old, under-educated versus college grad...

Her campaign now resembles a political neutron bomb that wipes out all living contenders and leaves only the super-structure of her own aspiration standing.  Apparently, the idea is to crush the interloper Obama, either in Denver, through some deus ex machina of spineless super-delegates stampeding her way, or to have McCain do her work for her so that she can challenge the septuagenarian in 2012. If so, her motto will be the familiar taunt of the schoolhouse tattletale: "I told you so." [More] . . read more

Political style and clichéd soundbytes cannot paper over long-term structural determinants that maintain and perpetuate poverty, inequality, and discrimination. A rabid patriotism cannot legitimate a corrupt nationalism that seeks to maintain the racial asymmetries of the status quo predicated on a historical amnesia that evades the legacies of America’s peculiar institution. Mass mediated political commentary cannot dictate the terrain of acceptable politics for those whose base of support is independent of the political games that Capital plays.

For “We the people”, the Wright episode can mark the end of politics – the politics of the given – and mark the beginning of a radical politics of deep democracy. [More] . . read more

Republican deregulation brought about fraud in mortgage lending and dangerous financial instruments which have collapsed the housing market, leaving a million or more homeowners facing foreclosure. The financial system is in disarray and might collapse from insolvency. The trade and budget deficits have exploded. The U.S. trade deficit is larger than the combined trade deficits of every deficit country in the world. The U.S. can no longer finance its wars or its own government and relies on foreign loans to function day to day...

Republicans have run roughshod over the U.S. Constitution, Congress, the courts and civil liberties. Republicans have made it perfectly clear that they believe that our civil liberties make us unsafe - precisely the opposite view of our Founding Fathers. Yet, Republicans regard themselves as the Patriotic Party. The Republicans have violated the Nuremberg prohibitions against war crimes, and they have violated the Geneva Conventions against torture and abuse of prisoners. Republican disregard for human rights ranks with that of history’s great tyrants. The Republicans have put in place the foundation for a police state.

I am confident that the Democrats, too, will make a mess. But can they beat this record? We must get the Republicans totally out of power, or we will have no country left for the Democrats to mess up. [More] . . read more

But wait a minute. During the Cold War, before it collapsed in a heap of rubble, the Soviet Union was a country of nearly 250 million people. Its mighty Red Army had defeated the German Wehrmacht in World War II. The USSR had tens of thousands of nuclear bombs and it had missiles bigger than ours, capable of lobbing 20-megaton bombs on American cities. It held half a dozen European nations of ancient lineage captive, and financed dreaded revolutionary forces around the globe. It had a nuclear submarine fleet that was better than ours, and that was equipped with sea-launched missiles that could be fired at U.S. targets from locations only minutes from our coastline.

Iran, in contrast, is a poor country of 70 million. It has no nuclear weapons. It has no missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, much less of carrying them halfway around the world to U.S. targets. It hasn’t conquered or even attacked another country in centuries, and seems to show little interest in doing so (it couldn’t even defeat Iraq, a country less than half its size, which attacked it in the 1980s). Its navy consists of little boats more suitable to towing water skiers than to fighting American carrier battle groups. Its air force wouldn’t last a day in a contest with the planes from just one U.S. carrier. Hell, Iran's leadership is afraid of its own women! But Big John is afraid, and he says we all should be too. [More] . . read more

The truth is, in the 54 primaries, Obama won a majority of female voters — a point rarely made in media reports on this contest. The same can be said of those “white, hard working white” voters who supposedly went for Hillary Clinton in states like West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio. In fact, numerically speaking, Obama won more of those white, working class voters than did either John Kerry or Al Gore before him...

The Hillary Clinton campaign has all along been about entitlement. She began her race for the White House acting as though it was a coronation — something she deserved after enduring eight years in the White House as second fiddle to husband Bill. Now, having been defeated, she’s acting like she deserves second fiddle. But the truth is, Clinton, by her shabby appeals to racist voters, by her resort to red-baiting of her opponent, and finally by her refusal to denounce and apologize for her shameless and calculating backing for the invasion of Iraq, has rendered herself unfit for a spot on the Democratic ticket.

Obama can do much better than that. Yes he can. [More] . . read more

McCain had a unique POW experience. Initially, he was taken to the infamous Hanoi Hilton prison camp, where he was interrogated. By McCain’s own account, after three or four days he cracked... His Vietnamese captors soon realized their POW, John Sidney McCain III, came from a well-bred line in the American military elite... McCain was held for five and half years. The first two weeks’ behavior might have been pragmatism, but McCain soon became North Vietnam’s go-to collaborator. McCain cooperated with the North Vietnamese for a period of three years. His situation isn’t as innocuous as that of the French barber who cuts the hair of the German occupier. McCain was repaying his captors for their kindness and mercy.

This is the lesson of McCain’s experience as a POW: a true politician, a hollow man, his only allegiance is to power. The Vietnamese, like McCain’s campaign contributors today, protected and promoted him, and, in return, he danced to their tune. [More] . . read more

This is a computer-literate society, and as the BBC reported this morning on the Today programme, the demographics of those who have taken their dissent out on the streets who how to make their voice heard on the web too. Among the keenest protesters are well-educated and westernised young people who have active on the internet for years now.

What the web has provided is a means to provide near real-time and unfiltered information to pour out of Iran. Twitter in particular has been a focus for those want the absolute latest news. After an initial fight amongst users about what Twitter feed people should follow for the latest on Iran, most are now using the #iranelection tag to send in their tweets.

Some have clearly being using the micro-blogging service to try and organise protests. “After yesterday million-large protests, continue your peaceful protests today in Tehran at Valiasr Street 5pm TELL EVERYONE,” wrote one Twitter user this morning.

Initially, reports from Tehran straight after the election suggested the authorities had tried to interfere or had disabled access to some sites, like Twitter and Facebook, and even blocked SMS text messages, a preferred medium of communication amongst young Iranian. Reporters Without Borders said that ten or so pro-opposition websites were censored in the aftermath of the election results being announced. Under such conditions, Iranian hackers reportedly help to keep channels to access the web open and even took down Mr. Ahmadinejad's website in an act of sabotage.

In this context, it is easier to understand some of the debates that are raging on social media sites. Some Twitter users complained that the #iranelection feed was being watched, filtered and censored by the Iranian regime. As that rumour began to spread, others said this was a deliberate misinformation trying to make people wary about using Twitter.

Despite all of this, the #iranelection feed has been amongst the most popular Twitter feed for the past days. Seeing this unprecedented surge of interest, Twitter announced yesterday that it will change the times that it would take down the site for maintenance. Twitter moved the downtime to the middle of the night Iran time, with founder Biz Stone explaining that they were recognising “the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran.”

The revolution may not be televised in Iran, but it may well be tweeted.

[via Times Online]  . . read more

To have persuaded enough Democrats that a black man can be their champion in November and have a passable chance of winning the Oval Office is a tremendous achievement, even if Obama’s campaign has flagged badly in recent weeks... The battle was won in the first two months, when Obama ambushed Mrs Clinton’s slow-moving phalanx. He crushed Mrs Clinton in grassroots organizing and in fundraising which eventually left her campaign, top-heavy with consultants extorting huge salaries, deeply in debt. Meanwhile Obama banked millions both from big Wall Street institutions and small contributors.

Obama right now has an edge in electoral college votes, though this somewhat depends which faction of number crunchers you believe. By almost every yardstick, except the wild card of his skin color, he’ll win. It should be inconceivable for a Republican to capture the White House for the third time in a row when the price of gasoline is headed towards $5 a gallon, food prices are soaring and most Americans reckon things are going to get a lot worse. [More] . . read more