Link Banana

While most of America is still obsessed with what scandal will next be dug up about Sarah Palin, Foreign Policy offers an interesting list of Barack Obama’s ten worst policy proposals. It’s unlikely that you could ever find consensus on such a list, but it’s worth seeing what they’ve come up with.

UPDATE (9/2/08): As a counterpoint (or maybe just because I liked it), I offer a recent Op-Ed by Sarah Vowell.

It’ll only prove that America is too racist to elect a black man. So says Slate’s Jacob Weisberg:

If it makes you feel better, you can rationalize Obama’s missing 10-point lead on the basis of Clintonite sulkiness, his slowness in responding to attacks, or the concern that Obama may be too handsome, brilliant, and cool to be elected. But let’s be honest: If you break the numbers down, the reason Obama isn’t ahead right now is that he trails badly among one group, older white voters. He does so for a simple reason: the color of his skin.

I just read two profiles. Neither was interesting enough to merit it’s own post, but the combination seemed to just pass the bar. The two:

• Dr. Doom. Depending on who you ask Nouriel Roubini is either a lucky pessimist or prescient thinker. There is, however, no doubt that he predicted America’s current economic turmoil in 2006.
• Hit Man. Jerry Corsi, author of the bestselling “Obama’s a Muslim drug addict” book, gets a brief but interesting profile in the New Yorker.

Proof that adults always underestimate the young. In this case, their racism (emphasis mine):

Over the course of the last few months, Rasmussen has been tracking attitudes about voting for a black candidate for President.  What they have been finding is that the public is gradually becoming more willing to support such a candidate, but what is most striking in the three surveys they have done is how constant and relatively great the unwillingness to support a black candidate has been in the age group you probably least expect.  According to the three surveys, 18-29 year olds are now relatively less willing to support a black candidate than voters from other age groups. While resistance to supporting a black candidate has dropped in every other age group since February, and overall stands at just 8%, it remains basically unchanged among the youngest voters.

Teddy Roosevelt’s famous model for diplomacy was “Talk softly but carry a big stick.” Barack Obama’s model for diplomacy is… Winnie the Pooh?

Mr Danzig [an Obama advisor] spelt out the need to change by reading a paragraph from chapter one of the children’s classic, which says: “Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump on the back of his head behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming down stairs. But sometimes he thinks there really is another way if only he could stop bumping a minute and think about it.”

(via Passport)

Speaking of the senator, Daily Intel received a rather strange email from the people selling dolls that seems to imply the Democratic candidate is a monkey:

We at TheSockObama Co. are saddened that some individuals have chosen to misinterpret our plush toy. It is not, nor has it ever been our objective to hurt, dismay or anger anyone. We guess there is an element of naviete on our part, in that we don’t think in terms of myths, fables, fairy tales and folklore. We simply made a casual and affectionate observation one night, and a charming association between a candidate and a toy we had when we were little. We wonder now if this might be a great opportunity to take this moment to really try and transcend still existing racial biases. We think that if we can do this together, maybe it will behoove us a nation and maybe we’ll even begin to truly communicate with one another more tenderly, more real even.

This is only our introductory plush toy. If we choose to move forward with a Republican candidate, we’ll begin with an elongated and slightly lumpy, fuzzy Idaho potato. Had a different Democratic candidate won the nomination, we were prepared to move forward with the cutest, fluffiest 12” chestnut and golden-haired squirrel, with a short Farrah-like do in a brown pantsuit and call her Squirellary.

Because we hadn’t already heard it 1000 times. Also, I realize a lot of this is just noise, but — like Blake Houshnell — I’m wondering what Spain has against McCain.

Michelle Goldberg offers what could be a very useful explanation for those wondering why so many vocal Clinton supporter’s still refuse to accept the nomination of Senator Obama:

Hillary Clinton has lost the nomination, but some of her most ardent female backers seem unwilling to accept it. A strange narrative has developed, abetted by Clinton and some of the mainstream feminist organizations. In it, the will of the voters was thwarted by chauvinistic party leaders in concert with a servile media, and Obama’s victory represents a repeat of George W. Bush’s in 2000. It’s a story in which Obama becomes every arrogant young man who has ever edged out a more deserving middle-aged woman, and Clinton, hanging on until the bitter end, is not a spoiler but a feminist martyr.

(via Matt Yglesias)

Senator Obama’s body man, Reggie Love, offers some stunningly out-of-touch details on the candidate.

DISLIKES

• Mayonnaise
• Salt and vinegar potato chips
• Asparagus (“if no other vegetables are available, he’ll eat it”)
• Soft drinks (he prefers water)

Two recent mentions of the psychological trick caught my eye. First: in his review of Nudge, John Cassidy — while pointing out that Senator Obama’s policies share logic with those of the book — offer this interesting test:

If you think you are too smart for this description to apply to you, try this simple mental exercise. Take the last three digits of your cell phone number, obtaining a number between zero and 999, and add two hundred to it. Write down the resulting figure and put the letters AD after it. Now, consider this question: When did Attila the Hun invade Europe?

Unless you are an expert on the Dark Ages, or your brain is unusually wired, the chances are that your answer will be pretty close to the date you write down. Say the last three digits of your cell number are 787 and the number you write down is 987 AD. Then, most likely, 900 AD will sound like a reasonable answer to you, and so will 1050 AD, but [440, the correct answer] will sound wrong. That was certainly how it worked when I tried the exercise.

Also, Matt Yglesias suspects a local developer is employing the technique to show why he should move.

This very nearly made me cry.

(via Andrew Sullivan)

Every once in a while, something leaps out of this boring part in the election cycle and makes me pay attention. Today, it was this line from John Harwood on Meet the Press. He says it at the very start of the round table, at about 27:30 in the web video.

If we found out that there was a secret poker game when Tony Rezko was paying Barack Obama to write Jeremiah Wright’s sermons and to organize Muslim English professors form a new Weather Underground chapter, maybe Barack Obama could be stopped.

This one was too rich not to share:

Hillary Clinton enthusiastically picked a filly named Eight Belles to win the Kentucky Derby and compared herself to the horse. Eight Belles finished second. The winner was the favorite, Big Brown. Eight Belles collapsed immediately after crossing the finish line, and was euthanized shortly thereafter.

I’ve been thoroughly bored by the last few months of the presidential campaign, but this bit of counter-intuitive advice got my attention:

Even as Hillary Clinton trails Barack Obama in pledged delegates, the popular vote, and number of states won, she has made it clear that she plans to stay in the race for the nomination. All of which brings me to this logical conclusion: It is time for Barack Obama to drop out.

If Clinton had the good of the Democratic Party in mind, she would have given up her bid the day after the Mississippi primary, which Obama won by 25 points. The delegate math was as dismal for her campaign then as it is now, even after Pennsylvania, and she was facing down a six-week gulf before the next election.

But Hillary Clinton isn’t going to drop out. There simply isn’t a function in her assembly code for throwing in the towel.

Obama, on the other hand, is fully capable of it. And if he’s really serious about representing a new kind of politics, now is the time for him to prove it in the only meaningful way left. Moreover, were he to play it right, dropping out now nearly guarantees that he’ll be elected president in 2012.

There’s good reason to find Colson Whitehead’s piece “too clever by half,” but I enjoyed it.

People think I have it easy, but it’s surprisingly difficult being The Guy Who Got Where He Is Only Because He’s Black, what with the whole having to be everywhere in the country at once thing. One second I’m nodding enthusiastically in a sales conference in Boise, Idaho, and the next I’m separating conjoined triplets at the Institute For Terribly Complicated Surgery in Buchanan, N.Y., and then I have to rush out to Muncie, Ind., to put my little “Inspector 12” tag in a bag of Fruit of the Loom.

It’s exhausting, all that travel. Decent, hard-working folks out there have their religion and their xenophobia to cling to. All I have is a fistful of upgrades to first class and free headphones. Headphones That Should Have Gone to a More Deserving Passenger.

But not just any half-eaten waffle… as the auction declares:

THIS IS BARAK HUSSEIN OBAMA’S BREAKFAST FROM THIS MORNING, 4-21-08 AT THE GLIDER DINER IN SCRANTON, PA. WINNER GETS HIS USED DINER PLATE WITH HIS USED SILVERWARE AND UN EATEN PORTION OF HIS WAFFLE & SAUSAGE LINK. IT WAS WRAPPED WITH SARAN WRAP IMMEDIATELY AFTER HIS DEPARTURE AND IS NOW IN THE FREEZER AWAITING THE LUCKY WINNERS BID!!! THIS IS 100% AUTHENTIC AS YOU CAN SEE HE WAS AT THE DINER BY THE PICTURE AND IT WAS ON ALL LOCAL NEWS STATIONS. THIS PLATE WAS WRAPPED BY THE WAITRESS THAT SERVED HIM. GUARANTEED AUTHENTIC, HIS DNA IS ON THE SILVERWARE. ALL PROCEEDS GO TO HILLARY FOR PRESIDENT!!!! HAHA

(via Mr. Sullivan)

It certainly makes an interesting mashup.

(via Douthat)

Nothing in this piece is terribly surprising, but still I like to know how events in the United States are understood in other parts of the world. It would happen that though Hillary Clinton and John McCain are preferred by most Israelis, Mr. Obama is generally the favorite of Arabs. With one caveat:

Some Arabs are less smitten. Anti-Syrian politicians and activists in Lebanon may worry about Mr Obama’s willingness to start talks with Iran, fearing that they could result in America “selling out” Lebanon in exchange for a deal elsewhere in the region. But, for now, he seems to be the candidate of choice among Arabs.

Michael Eric Dyson makes some interesting points in this LA Times Op-Ed. Pointing to some of Dr. King’s controversial statements made after 1965 to mostly black audiences, he says that Revered Wright is clearly a descendent of King’s split opinion on race.

Perhaps nothing might surprise — or shock — white Americans more than to discover that King said in 1967: “I am sorry to have to say that the vast majority of white Americans are racist, either consciously or unconsciously.” In a sermon to his congregation in 1968, King openly questioned whether blacks should celebrate the nation’s 1976 bicentennial. “You know why?” King asked. “Because it [the Declaration of Independence] has never had any real meaning in terms of implementation in our lives.” 

I’m sure many will find this pointless or perhaps even insulting (it’s undeniably hostile to Mrs. Clinton), but I think it’s rather funny.

(via Donklephant)