The Bleeding Heart Show

For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, let’s go over this one last time. The ‘change’ Barack Obama believes in isn’t just a syrupy by-word for Bambiesque ‘ideals’ like diplomacy, resisting the urge to torture prisoners & restoring Habeas Corpus; rather, it’s a black-powered Marxist death cult determined to enslave ‘whitey’ and hasten the arrival of the End Times. At least, that’s what anyone who’s read Melanie Phillips’ blog over the past few months would be forgiven for believing.

Unable to get too excited about John McCain (she’s written more about Sarah Palin than the Straight Talkin’ One), Mel decided to focus her blogging prowess on uncovering all there is to know about the slippery Illinois Senator, speculating about Obama’s ‘Muslim roots’, the ‘Muslim roots’ of his ex Pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and the ‘Muslim roots’ of shamed former associate, Antoin Rezko. Having done the whole ‘the Muslims are coming!’ thing to death, she’s tried a new tack in recent weeks, reminding her readers about his association with the ‘radical’ Saul Alinsky, the ‘radical terrorist’ William Ayers, and now the ‘radical, black Communist’ Frank Marshall Davis. So what’s this black Senator doing with all these radicals then? Well, obviously because he shares their agenda:

the agenda indeed of Gramsci/Alinsky: patron saints of community organisers, apostles of deeply underground mole-like revolutionary Marxism, architects of the wildly successful undermining of western morality and society in America and Britain — and now poised to embed itself in the White House, epicentre of the oppressive global capitalist regime, itself.

Join up the dots.

You can bet she felt very smug writing that part. Progressives don’t have anything to fear from the allegations made in Mel’s mega-series; most are second-hand recitations of long-debunked smears (she insists on citing 9/11 conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi despite the fact his book couldn’t even get the date of Barack & Michelle’s wedding correct), whilst the rest rely on the Guilt by Association fallacy. What does baffle me, however, is why she continues to do it. Does she not know that the sources for her smears are discredited? Is she aware they’re discredited but still believe them to be true? Or, worse, does she just not care whether the information she uses is sound or not? To illustrate, let’s look at the credentials of three men credited with the information in Mel’s last post:

Trevor Loudon: An ex-Vice President of New Zealand’s right-wing ACT Party, Loudon is a student of Zenith Applied Philosophy, a small Scientology spin-off founded by a guy who calls himself ‘John Ultimate’ and believes his home to be the centre of the universe. ZAP has attracted some controversy over its reported links with fascist organisations. When he’s not busy suggesting Obama is a Communist, Loudon can occasionally be found comparing cabinet ministers to Himmler.

Cliff Kincaid: Cliff is president of ‘UN watchdog group’ America’s Survival and editor of Accuracy In Media. Once funded by philanthropist of the far-right, Richard Mellon Scaife, AIM achieved notoriety in 2001 by ‘proving’ Bill Clinton had ordered the murder of Vince Foster, despite three independent investigations (including one by Kenneth Starr) finding no evidence for it. Ever eager to jump on a non-story to slime his enemies, in 07 Kincaid pronounced that the ‘Hillary is a lesbian’ lie was ‘as explosive’ as the lie about Obama being raised as a Muslim. Just for laughs, Kincaid also happens to believe that you can stop being gay as easily as you can quit smoking.

Herbert Romerstein: A lower-profile hatchet man than the others. Romerstein’s life’s work has been smearing people as unpatriotic, from his work investigating Un-American Activities in Congress, through to a line of books on the matter. He smeared the writer I.F. Stone as a Communist despite being the sole source for the accusation, and was described by decorated US attorney Martin Garbus as ‘utterly untrustworthy’.

These are the people Melanie Phillips cites, uncritically, to build her latest case against Barack Obama. Not exactly Woodward & Bernstein, is it? I have no idea whether Phillips’ continually clumsy hatchet job on Obama is due to laziness, naivety, delusion or just plain old partisan cynicism. But the last time I checked, there were still some standards of honesty & accuracy in the journalistic profession, and if Phillips can’t adhere to even the most basic of those standards, then perhaps she’d be better off resigning from her posts, taking up blogging full time, and retiring to the world of the hackneyed hard-right, where every conservative is virtuous, every liberal is evil and where nothing they say or write is ever, ever wrong.

This pretty much backs up the point I made in my post last night. Such an excruciating interview that I almost feel sorry for him:

Inquisitive minds have a right to know

Well, if John McCain wanted a Vice Presidential nominee who’d attract attention, he’s certainly succeeded; his choice of Sarah Palin has provoked the kind of enthusiasm, ire and plain old bemusement that Joe Biden was never likely to match. No one, it seems, has caught Palin fever more than our own Iain Dale. Iain is apparently so compelled by the ‘barracuda’ that he felt moved to devote most of his Sunday to her; not to wax lyrical about her political accomplishments, of course, but to admonish all who dare criticise.

His first two posts on the matter were the kind of predictably partisan arm-flailing you’ll get at this point in the election cycle: one scolding some unnamed left-wing antagonists who apparently hate her for not owning any Valerie Solanas books or whatever; the other trying unconvincingly to present this bonkers Daily Kos diary as evidence of a desperate conspiracy. Neither post should arouse anything more than an upturned eyebrow.

But when he gets onto the ‘experience factor’, you begin to worry about whether he’s inhaled a little too much helium. Catch this:

To Those Who Criticise Palin…

… for her lack of experience, I just have one word for them: Cheney.

The left regard Cheney as the devil incarnate. But even they couldn’t contest the fact that Cheney had huge experience of government and foreign affairs before he became Vice President.

I don’t disqualify Obama from being President because he has no executive experience or real foreign policy experience. Neither did Clinton. Neither did Blair. Neither did Mrs T. Obama has had time to prove himself qualified to run for the Presidency. He passed that test with flying colours long ago, and that’s why he won the Deomcratic nomination. Sarah Palin has yet to pass that test, and now has 68 days to do so. I don’t know whether she will or not. But to write her off in the derogatory terms her opponents have done hitherto is ridicul4ous and worse.

On face value, there’s nothing substantively wrong with this argument, but I link to it because it’s the latest example of a strange trend among conservative bloggers on both sides of the Atlantic – namely, their bizarre comfort with the prospect of losing ‘experience’ as a campaign issue.

In terms of years in public service, Barack Obama doesn’t have much more experience than Sarah Palin. Personally, I think four years on the Senate foreign relations committee prepares you better for the Presidency than simply living near Russia, but that’s just personal preference – and I was never going to support her anyway. I also agree that if you’re going to justify your support for the inexperienced candidate by insisting that judgement is more important, then you can’t just dismiss that argument when it’s applied to one of the Republicans. But here’s the rub:

John McCain is losing this election. He’s not losing by much, and victory isn’t irretrievable, but look beyond Gallup’s daily tracking poll and you’ll see him trailing in Iowa, Colarado, New Mexico and Nevada – states McCain must hold to win the election. As a result, he has to attack Obama, and no issue should be off limits. But by picking Palin as his running mate, the ‘experience’ issue – one of the strongest issues his campaign had – is now effectively off-limits. Any attack on Obama as ‘dangerously inexperienced’ would be swiftly rebutted with the line ‘Sarah Palin: a heartbeat away from the Presidency’, and whilst it’s unlikely that either party would emerge from the spat with a victory, it was an issue that McCain could’ve scored highly with.

So whilst I understand conservative bloggers’ desire to defend Palin by comparing her inexperience with Obama’s, they would do well to realise that the right is on the defensive. And for a campaign that needs to be on the attack from now until November, this marks a very inauspicious start.

Image from Flickr user asecondhandconjecture (Creative Commons)

When an old white millionaire is viewed as more in-touch with working Americans than a black man who was raised by a single mother, Dr King’s dream is finally realised. Some first-rate satire:

It’s a bit late now, but for what it’s worth, Virginia Senator Jim Webb was always my favoured running-mate for Barack Obama. Webb’s years of service in the US military, both as a marine and Secretary of the Navy, his early opposition to the Iraq war and his very genuine despair at growing income inequalities ticked most of my political criteria and his tough, dignified persona and proud Scots-Irish heritage would’ve been a rugged, robust counterbalance to the more urbane, cosmopolitan Obama. Stood side by side, they would’ve epitomised two very different stories of what it is to be an American and their partnership would’ve underlined Obama’s core message that he can bring people together to enact change.

This was all rendered a little mute after Webb withdrew his name from the Veepstakes, and I couldn’t muster much enthusiasm for the alternatives. Of all the options being discussed, Evan Bayh, Tim Kaine and Kathleen Sebelius were all too centrist and unspectacular media performers, Hillary Clinton was a non-starter even before her spectacular implosion during the primaries and Bill Richardson may have had too much of a woman problem to have been considered seriously. I was equally indifferent to the prospect of Obama chosing Joe Biden, but after seeing his speech yesterday, I’m beginning to see the merits.

Let’s be clear: if Obama had been free to make his choice from a position of strength, he probably wouldn’t have picked Biden. Nothing says “I’m worried people don’t think I have enough experience” more than nominating someone who’s been in the Senate for over 30 years. Ever since he returned from his world tour, Obama’s been losing ground to a newly-confident, newly-effective McCain campaign that’s finally shaken off its lumbering veneer of nobility and reverted to the base Republican instincts of mendacity, mischaracterisation, and hairy-knuckled, neanderthal bullying. So without the comfort of the 10 point lead he was, at one point, threatening to build, Obama went ’safety first’ and picked a foreign affairs expert who could defend his weak flank. With this in mind, it’s easy to have some sympathy for Markos Moulitsas’ complaint that Obama’s pick merely ‘plugged a hole’, rather than reinforcing his core message of change. I agreed with that right up until yesterday’s speech. When he left the podium some 25 minutes later, I realised that he could do something far more potent: he could reinforce Obama’s arguments.

In this multi-faceted, media-driven environment, an argument is an easy thing to distort. When spoken for the first time, its meaning can be mangled, its language mocked and its content turned into a weapon aimed to injure the person who made it. So when a Democratic candidate takes to the stage offering slightly more nuanced policies than “Bomb Here!” or “Drill There!”, he needs someone who can speak plainly & blunty about how his ideas are better than his opponent’s. And when the same candidate wraps those nuances in high-minded, poetic rhetoric, he needs a partner who can translate it into a prose that can appeal to independents. On the evidence of his performance last night, Biden is that partner.

His performance wasn’t perfect; he stumbled over some of his words, talked over a few easy rounds of applause, underemphasised some parts of the speech and overplayed others. But such was the depth of sincerity in the speech, those imperfections didn’t seem to matter. Biden speaks of the country’s problems as emotionally as he can speak of its opportunities; remarkably for someone who’s been in the Senate for as long as he has, he doesn’t have the air of jaded hackery that afflicts politicians both older and younger. And whilst he clearly respects John McCain as a friend, he has no respect for the Republican platform and let that show in a series of hard blows that underscored his dangerous flaws.

With a series of excellent speeches from Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton and even John Kerry, last night the Democrats put together one of their strongest line-ups and presented their best case for why Barack Obama should be the next President. For all their renewed optimism, the Republicans will really have to punch above their weight to beat it.

Photo from Flickr user bobster1985 (Creative Commons)

Just to stave off any impression that we’re a bunch a simpering, hope-swilling sycophants ’round these parts, here’s a decent article by Radley Balko, who blogs at The Agitator, listing the top questions he’d like to ask Barack Obama. It’s a tough, probing and (mostly) fair list, which underlines some of the inconsistencies & flaws observable in the current frontrunner for President.

— In a speech to Cuban-Americans in Miami, you called the Cuban trade embargo “an important inducement for change,” a 180-degree shift from your prior position. The trade embargo has been in place for 46 years. Did denying an entire generation of Cubans access to American goods, culture, and ideas induce any actual change? Wasn’t the real effect just to keep Cubans poor and isolated? In communist countries like Vietnam and China, trade with the U.S. has ushered in economic reform, and vastly improved the standard of living. Why wouldn’t it be the same if we were to start trading with Cuba?

More here. His questions for John McCain are here.

Shorter Sarah Baxter: Barack Obama’s world tour is frought with political peril because… he’s only up by four points in the national polls and (the shock! the horror!) he hasn’t won Angelina Jolie’s vote yet.

Not content with bringing us this profound analysis, she then points out that Obama’s ratings on foreign policy aren’t as high as McCain’s, and therefore touring Iraq, Afghanistan and the capitals of Europe as a way of improving those numbers is a dangerous thing to do.

Now, I’m not surprised that The Times isn’t going degrade itself by fawning over the Obamessiah, and I quite enjoy reading pieces that subject the Hopeful One to some scrutiny (like this by Gary Younge, for example). But the least they can do is make an argument that, y’know, makes sense. Like calling him a dirty, drug-addled Communist hippie, or something.

For those who’re interested, this, via Electoral-vote.com, is how the race is shaping up. At the time of writing, Obama has 312 electoral votes, McCain has 199, and another 27 are from states in statistical dead heats. If the election were held today, Obama wins in a landslide.

So ‘only’ winning a national opinion poll by a margin of 4% is meaningless as there’s no such thing as a national vote. When you look at individual states, the Obama campaign is in commanding form, and whilst that’s hardly cause for complacency, neither is it cause for Democrats to - as Baxter suggests - consider pre-emptively donating to Hillary Clinton’s 2012 election campaign.

When the weather gets warm (at least, that’s the rumour) and journalists & bloggers are stuck in a drought. Try as I might, I can’t find the rage required to get worked-up over this:

Seriously, if you can’t mock the mad right’s lunatic & racist portrayals of Obama in the archetypal liberal arts & current affairs magazine, when and where can you do it? I really hope some of the people hyperventilating over this never find their way to this blog - the things I’ve written in jest would be enough for them to commission a blood-baying mob to visit Sheffield (though after reading this, I wonder whether I’d even notice).

Here’s Ezra Klein with a nice dose of reason:

But I can’t seem to summon any outrage about it. Maybe if the the New Yorker had adeptly photoshopped an image such that it actually looked like Obama was in a turban, I’d think it more risible. But this is a cartoon. The very medium mocks and dismisses the content of the picture. Anyone who didn’t get the joke would be left looking at a caricatured illustration, not a believable image of Obama gripping bin-Laden’s portrait. What’s actually happening, I think, is that the New Yorker is a physical institution that can be criticized, while the e-mail forwards and talk radio whispers actually fueling these rumors — in their believable, not their cartoon, forms — won’t stand still long enough to be subject to public opprobrium.

So Obama ‘talks down to black people’ so much that Jesse Jackson wants to ‘cut his nuts off‘. Yes, MLK is dead all right. It also puts the secret service in a bit of a predicament - should they object if Obama finds himself seated next to Jackson at a fundraising dinner where there’d be a range of cutlery with which to carry out his threat? Should they intervene if Jackson reaches for a butter knife?

It’s a sad, odd little comment and because Fox is (perhaps wisely) holding back the rest of the tape, it’s difficult to know the exact context behind what was said. What we do know is that Jackson made the comment after a segment that touched upon Obama’s Fathers Day speech, wherein he implored black fathers to stop abandoning their kids and start taking responsibility for their own lives. The Guardian suggests that Jackson believed “Obama should have assigned blame to government and public policy for the breakdown of some black families”, which is perfectly understandable except for the fact that blame is almost always backwards-looking and governments don’t have the ability to keep families together.

His outburst is also a bit weird because the content of Obama’s Fathers Day speech wasn’t much different from speeches made by the like of Al Sharpton, Jackson himself, and countless other leaders in black communities. How come they can condemn family breakdown and urge people to act more responsibly but Obama can’t? Like I said, a sad and divisive outburst and as good a sign as any that Civil Rights-era figures like Jackson have had their day.

Update: I forgot to mention that this isn’t the first time Jesse Jackson’s questioned Obama’s authenticity on matters of race. He seems to carry an arrogance that says if you don’t agree with him on such things, then you’re either inauthentic or a traitor to the cause. Which, in stark contrast to the Senator, is an attitude that alienates far more people than it inspires.

Since the (hurrah!) next American President is on his way over here and looks set to meet the likely (boo!) next British Prime Minister, here’s Andrew Sullivan on David Cameron & Barack Obama:

His policy prescriptions - more autonomy at the bottom of public services, more accountability within the public sector, a gentle tax incentive for marriage - are more in line with traditional conservatism than wage subsidies, for example. And there’s an Obamaite tinge to Cameron as well: a young, eloquent, inexperienced and culturally modern individual emerging to replace a period of rule by the other party. One similarity: both are gay inclusive. One Cameron difference: he, like any Tory should, places more emphasis on environmentalism than Obama does.

[...]

What Obama is to race in America Cameron is to class in Britain: cultural game-changers. (emphasis mine)

So America gets a black man to usher in a postracial future and Britain gets an old Etonian to usher in a post-class future? Great. It’s a wonder there are no Cameron murals in Barnsley.

Policy-wise, there are sure to be some similarities between Obama & Cameron. As a community-organiser, Obama has experienced what can be achieved by empowering people at a local level and the way America was devised means it’s very difficult to have the kind of large, centralised delivery of public services we have in Britain. If elected, both men would find their hands tied somewhat by our countries’ respective borrowing and budget deficits.

But I think Sullivan continually overstates the symbolic value of a Cameron premiership. Sure, a postracial America could only emerge with something as symbolic as a black man being elected President. By the same measure, Britain isn’t going to overcome class antipathy by electing yet another Prime Minister who attended Eton. If you look at the two men’s biographies, Obama mixed race and multiracial upbringing meant he was able to identify the antipathies and resentments that exist between black and white Americans - as a result, his campaign has made overcoming these divisions a key theme. Cameron, on the other hand, was reared in great privilege and has spent his entire life amongst wealthy conservatives who resent that their taxes go to such undeserving lowlifes as single parents and the unemployed. Until becoming leader of the Tories, he’s never been anywhere near the deprived side of Britain and can’t hope to speak of it without sounding like a dillettante.

Maybe Cameron is sincere, the Tories are serious about helping the poor and they all honestly believe this is best achieved through localism and decentralisation; only time will tell whether this is a real change or just ‘back to basics’ with superior presentation. But you won’t see a postclass Britain by electing someone for whom class has brought nothing but benefits; it’ll be by electing someone as Prime Minister who, like Obama, had to break a great many barriers just to get there

The art of speechmaking has a deeply symbolic role in American poltics. For each era you’ll find a speech that either speaks to the national mood or offers a portent of things to come: Roosevelt’s ‘fear istelf‘, Johnson’s ‘great society‘, King’s ‘dream’ or Kennedy’s call to public service. In the eloquent visions they offer, the idealism they inspire and the unity & resolve they provoke, the great political speeches are wedded to American history almost as much as events themselves, and serve as a point of reference for those who choose the path of public service.

Because of this, the podium from which these political speeches are made has taken on a symbolism of its own. In this image-obsessed media age, great care is taken to ensure the slogans are bold and visionary, that the stage is showered with symbols of patriotism and that the audience reflects the rich diversity of the country. Though it is a cynical and manufactured process, nothing reflects the breadth and depth of the coalition Barack Obama’s campaign has built than the crowds who attend his speeches: young and old, black, white and hispanic all sat side-by-side to insist on a change in the way the country is governed.

But there is one face, quite depressingly, that’s seldom seen at the rallies, in the campaign literature or on the television commercials to support his candidacy. On Wednesday the Politico reported that two Muslim women dressed in hijabs had been barred from sitting behind the podium at an Obama rally in Detroit, Michigan.

“I was coming to support him, and I felt like I was discriminated against by the very person who was supposed to be bringing this change, who I could really relate to,” said Hebba Aref, a 25-year-old lawyer who lives in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills. “The message that I thought was delivered to us was that they do not want him associated with Muslims or Muslim supporters.”

Now, I should point out that the Obama campaign has apologised personally to the women involved; they insist the actions were taken independently by over-zealous staffers and are anaethema to the type of campaign the Illinois Senator wants to run. I happen to believe them, but that doesn’t make the news any less distressing.

For one, it’s just a missed opportunity. In the city with the largest Arab population in the US, there was an  opportunity for two Muslim women in traditional dress to share a stage with a Democrat who is committed to women’s rights, gay rights, religious freedom and equality of opportunity. The symbolism would’ve been huge - sending a statement to folks at home that Muslim American are Americans too, and showing the rest of the world that for all its faults, there are few places as diverse, inclusive and, yes, tolerant, as the United States of America.

Secondly, this incident puts a human face on an unease with the Obama campaign that’s lingered for some time: namely, the aggressiveness it exerts in refuting the ’smear’ that the Senator is a Muslim. Now, running for President is difficult enough when you’re a white, middle-aged war hero, let alone a black man whose middle name is Hussein, and it’s only right that his campaign pushes back against rumours being peddled by racists. But, as Naomi Klein argues, “what is disturbing about the campaign’s response is that it leaves unchallenged the disgraceful and racist premise behind the entire “Muslim smear”: that being Muslim is de facto a source of shame.”

As difficult as it may be, Obama needs to find a way to address this tension or else risk alienating a religious and ethnic group that has been demonised for far too long. He needs to state plainly that whilst he is a devout Christian, there is nothing wrong with being a Muslim, and that those spreading these lies do so not simply to demonise him, but every other American who practices Islam. Ezra Klein has a sensible suggestion:

The bigger move would be to invite them to the sit-down, and then make a speech forthrightly addressing not only the rumors, but the ugly undertone of the rumors, which implies that the religion of millions of Americans and over a billion people worldwide somehow renders them dangerously “other.”

Sure, it would be safer politically just to keep batting the rumours away with the same aggressiveness  shown so far, but - as we’ve seen with the Reverend Wright scandal and on many other occasions - Obama is at his best when taking those risks inherent in doing the right thing.

If nothing else, it might stop a few of his anxious staffers from freaking out at the sight of a Muslim woman who merely wants to watch him take to the podium and speak of the next great moment in American history.

Photo #1 taken by Flickr user (ahem!) Barack Obama (Creative Commons)

Photo #2 taken by Flickr user jetheriot (Creative Commons)

Or an ally of racists? Or merely a discredited hack who’s spent so long slurping at the septic tank of the far right that everything she says, everything she writes and everything she thinks is a slush of gangrenous bile?

Enquiring minds have a right to know!

Under the banner of Truth! Justice! and The Endless Pursuit of Fear-mongering Smears!, Ms Phillips reheats the old lie that a certain candidate for President of the United States of America is/was a Muslim. Uncritically citing one source that’s been debunked and dumped, and another by a blogger whose greatest hits include - get this - advocating bombing the US State Department, Ms Phillips suggests that Obama has been less than truthful about his filthy Muslim past and that his ‘conversion’ to Christianity over two decades ago might have been nothing but a ploy to help get himself elected:

We are entitled therefore to ask whether the Muslim world supports him because it believes he is still a Muslim. We are entitled to ask precisely when he stopped being a Muslim, and why. Did Obama embrace Christianity as a tactical manoeuvre to get himself elected?

Yep, she’s asking you to believe that Obama was planning a run for President 20 years ago!

Now, I’m not going to waste my time debunking that which has already been discredited over and over again, but if anyone’s still anxious about it, the truth is no more than eight clicks away. What I will say, however, is that it’s astonishing that a mainstream British commentator is uncritically parroting a smear that’s only being made by people on the outermost fringes of American politics.

Let’s return to our questions.

Is Melanie Phillips a racist? No. She may sensationalise the scale of the threat from radical Islam, and her work may be quoted by people who are racist, but that doesn’t mean she shares their views.

Is she an ally of racists? Not intentionally, but by spreading such smears under the guise of ‘I’m just asking in the public interest’, she inevitably helps reinforce a narrative being framed by bigots.

Is she “a discredited hack who’s spent so long slurping at the septic tank of the far right that everything she says, everything she writes and everything she thinks is a slush of gangrenous bile?”

Well, I’ll let you make up your own minds.

Via Hertzberg, a truly enlightening explanation of the tension, condescension and mistrust some Israelis have towards Barack Obama’s bid for the Presidency:

The reasons are many. Israelis instinctively fear charismatic leaders whipping up distant audiences. Or is it that Obama is tapping a pure strain of optimism that, as he told some young people after his speech, should make cynicism seem negotiable? When the Israeli press repeats, again and again, how “inexperienced” Obama is, this is code for their fears, the saddest of which is the fear of hoping for peace again.

In the back of their minds they fear that two generations of special pleading—about how Israel’s occupation should be rationalized as the Jews’ special need to (how does Prof. Yehezkel Dror put it?) “subordinate morality to survival”—may not quite work on Obama, much the way it did not work on Kissinger. Obama has heard Jabotinsky-like apologetics for victim exceptionalism from the Sharptons—indeed, from the Wrights—for two generations. It takes one to know one. The most frightening question is this: if democracy makes a black man a mainstream American, can it also make an Arab a mainstream Israeli?

So there is a peculiarly Israeli condescension for Obama just now, which I predict will dissipate as he grows in stature, and the world he is sketching feels more imminent. It is the same condescension most have, since Oslo, for people who trusted Arabs, or still trust politicians, or stop for pedestrians, or think voters are not just selfish. It is the condescension people in the peace movement endure day in, day out. The thing is, Obama is not a graying professor at a Van Leer Institute seminar. He is quite possibly the next president of the United States.

Mr Avishai also goes on to assess how his speech to AIPAC was received and how it might go some way to reassuring his sceptics. For that, you should go read the whole thing.

Image by Flickr user threecee (Creative Commons)

If you haven’t heard by now that the next President of the United States will be a coke-snortin’, jew-hatin’ Islamoid who despises American traditions and intends to swear the oath of office on the Koran/Hustler, then you’ve clearly been hypnotised by the Big Media Lie Machine.

Just two short months ago, crazed Islamomurderers Hamas endorsed Barack HUSSEIN Obama as their candidate for Destroyer of Civilisation, knowing that his messages of ‘change’ and ‘hope’ were actually code for rising the price of oil to $3,000 a barrel and passing laws that allow gay Iranians to fornicate on street corners.

But it seems these crazy keffiyehs are so stupid they’ll even turn on one of their own! Whilst no true freedom-lover is fooled by Hussein’s insipid sloganeering, it seems these devilish despots are disillusioned by his promise not to kill any Christians:

“Obama’s comments have confirmed that there will be no change in the U.S. administration’s foreign policy on the Arab-Israeli conflict,” Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters in Gaza.

“The Democratic and Republican parties support totally the Israeli occupation at the expense of the interests and rights of Arabs and Palestinians,” he said.

“Hamas does not differentiate between the two presidential candidates, Obama and Mccain, because their policies regarding the Arab-Israel conflict are the same and are hostile to us, therefore we do have no preference and are not wishing for either of them to win,” Zuhri said.

Whoop with delight, McCain supporters! The ‘inspiring one’ is already losing his electoral base! Victory is nigh!