At last, a prominent politician, and a Republican to boot, has said what I've been waiting weeks for someone to say about the repeated accusation that Obama is a Muslim - namely, 'Even if he were a Muslim, so what?'. Thank you Colin Powell for finally recognising and responding to these repeated displays of appalling racism.
These are some of the finest photographs I've ever seen, especially 19 and 37. Stunning.
This is a brilliant idea, and the results so far (though on reflection unsurprising) are fairly amazing...
http://www.economist.com/vote2008/
Late addition: a timely piece on just this topic from Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/10/uselections2008.barackobama
"The world's verdict will be harsh if the US rejects the man it yearns for. An America that disdains Obama for his global support risks turning current anti-Bush feeling into something far worse."
I share the sentiments of the author of this piece in the Independent. I really hope we're being paranoid, and that this is all just rumour, hearsay or propaganda (or all three). Nevertheless, one can't help but feel frightened by this sort of thing:
[Republicans'] first vote-stripping tactic is to require elaborate voter identification that black people disproportionately lack. For example, in Indiana – a crucial swing state – Republicans have passed a law requiring voters to bring an official government document bearing their photograph to the polling station. But a study by the University of Wisconsin found that 53 per cent of black adults didn't have a passport or driving licence, compared to 15 per cent of white people. So they can't vote unless they travel for hours (often without a car) to a sparse government registry and queue for half a day to get the correct documentation. The former political director of the Texas Republican Party, Royal Masset, explains: "Requiring photo IDs could cause enough of a drop-off in legitimate Democratic voting to add 3 per cent to the Republican vote." Their second tactic is to strip the electoral rolls of black names. In almost all US states, criminals lose their vote for life. This is shocking in itself – it disenfranchises a quarter of all black men in Kentucky, for one. But many states have a sloppy process where they simply scrub anyone with the same name as a criminal off the list. So if there is a criminal called "Chris Wayne" in a county, every black man called "Chris Wayne" loses their vote. That's a lot of Democrats. In Florida in 2000, black voters made up 13 per cent of the electorate yet they were 26 per cent of the people wrongly disenfranchised.
I've just discovered these two excellent pieces in the New York Times about the extraordinary ways in which McCain and Palin are disfiguring the English language. A highlight from the Palin piece:
She dangles gerunds, mangles prepositions, randomly exiles nouns and verbs and also — “also” is her favorite vamping word — uses verbs better left as nouns, as in, “If Americans so bless us and privilege us with the opportunity of serving them,” or how she tried to “progress the agenda.”
There was an interesting piece in the Observer this weekend about how the GM foods debate seems to have been re-ignited by signs that the UK Government is beginning to push a pro-GM agenda. I consider myself very lucky to live in the UK where we have good information about the content and origins of most of our foods, and good organic food is readily available and (mostly) affordable. In the US you could be (and probably are) eating GM soya or corn much of the time and not realise it. Whilst I'm not against GM on principle, I do think that for all the complex ins and outs of Jay Rayner's Observer piece, the situation is quite simple. There is little or no agreement about the science, so surely it's far too early for us to be introducing GM foods en masse into the world's food supply?
Imagine an alternative scenario: say scientists couldn't agree on whether or not a particular chemical is harmful or beneficial to human health. Would anyone seriously suggest we add it to the water supply? Surely the only reasonable reaction to such a proposal would be this: let's do some more tests and experiments first, until we've secured at least a broad consensus on the matter, and then have the debate...
Perhaps I'm missing something?
I wonder if this is unprecedented...A prominent movie critic reviews a presidential debate (broadcast, naturally, on television). Either way, I agree with Rogert Ebert whole-heartedly:
I do not like you, John McCain. My feeling has nothing to do with issues. It has to do with common courtesy. During the debate, you refused to look Barack Obama in the eye. Indeed, you refused to look at him at all. Even when the two of you shook hands at the start, you used your eyes only to locate his hand, and then gazed past him as you shook it... If you came to dinner at my house and refused to look at or speak with one of my guests, that would be bad manners and I would be offended. Same thing if I went to your house. During the debate, you were America's guest.
What was your problem?
Glory be! I've just read a story by a Republican journalist that I not only agreed with, but which struck me as measured, sensible and containing several platitudes. Amidst all the often disingenuous-sounding talk of 'bi-partisanship' we hear in the election debates, I'm delighted to have detected the real thing in such a high profile place. Writing about the hysterical reactions of many Republicans to her recent denouncement of Sarah Palin, Kathleen Parker of The Washington Post writes:
The picture is this: Anyone who dares express an opinion that runs counter to the party line will be silenced. That doesn't sound American to me, but Stalin would approve.
Readers have every right to reject my opinion. But when we decide that a person is a traitor and should die for having an opinion different from one's own, we cross into territory that puts all freedoms at risk. (I hear you, Dixie Chicks.)
I'm sure it is coincidence that, upon the Palin column's publication, a conservative organization canceled a speech I was scheduled to deliver in a few days. If I were as paranoid as the conspiracy theorists are, I might wonder whether I was being punished for speaking incorrectly.
The editors of the New Yorker have written an extremely compelling statement endorsing Obama. Initially I worried the piece would be overburdened with statistics, but even if you share that concern, keep reading. By the end even I felt patriotic, and it isn't even my country (though I hope one day soon it will be). I've posted an excerpt below, but you can find the whole thing here.
The longer the campaign goes on, the more the issues of personality and character have reflected badly on McCain. Unless appearances are very deceiving, he is impulsive, impatient, self-dramatizing, erratic, and a compulsive risk-taker. These qualities may have contributed to his usefulness as a “maverick” senator. But in a President they would be a menace.
By contrast, Obama’s transformative message is accompanied by a sense of pragmatic calm. A tropism for unity is an essential part of his character and of his campaign. It is part of what allowed him to overcome a Democratic opponent who entered the race with tremendous advantages. It is what helped him forge a political career relying both on the liberals of Hyde Park and on the political regulars of downtown Chicago. His policy preferences are distinctly liberal, but he is determined to speak to a broad range of Americans who do not necessarily share his every value or opinion. For some who oppose him, his equanimity even under the ugliest attack seems like hauteur; for some who support him, his reluctance to counterattack in the same vein seems like self-defeating detachment. Yet it is Obama’s temperament—and not McCain’s—that seems appropriate for the office both men seek and for the volatile and dangerous era in which we live. Those who dismiss his centeredness as self-centeredness or his composure as indifference are as wrong as those who mistook Eisenhower’s stolidity for denseness or Lincoln’s humor for lack of seriousness.
Stumble It!