No doubt that by now everyone has heard that Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin’s Yahoo e-mail account(s) were cracked and the contents thereof distributed on the Internet. The whole imbroglio has got both Team Red and Team Blue riled up, and I’ve got a few thoughts on the affair.
As both a U.S. Attorney and Member of Congress, I defended drug prohibition. But it has become increasingly clear to me, after much study, that our current strategy has not worked and will not work.
…
It is obvious that, like Prohibition’s effort to eradicate alcohol usage, drug prohibition has not succeeded. Despite enormous law enforcement efforts — including the dedicated service of many thousands of professional men and women — the government has not halted drug use.
…
Whether we like it or not, tens of millions of Americans have used and will continue to use drugs.
Republicans are big on promoting freedom abroad, but in this country, the term encompasses a lot of things they don’t like—the right to a “homosexual lifestyle,” the right to protest the Iraq war, the right to privacy, the right not to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, and more. Conservatives who once thought Americans had too little freedom now sometimes think they have too much.
Liberals, on the other hand, are wary of embracing freedom precisely because of its historic importance to the right. They fear it means curbing the power of a government whose reach they want to expand.
While they value many personal liberties, they have no great attachment to forms of freedom that involve buying, selling, trading, and accumulating. Those, after all, can involve selfishness, and Democrats, like Republicans, don’t want to protect selfishness.
But freedom isn’t freedom without the right to pursue what you value—money or knowledge, pleasure or sacrifice, God or atheism, community or misanthropic solitude—rather than what others think you should value. It includes the right to go to hell, and the right to tell others to do the same.
The latter is a valuable prerogative that we have not yet lost. After watching the conventions, if you have the urge to use it on either of the two major parties, feel free.
At present, American liberals are not fighting for an Obama presidency. I suspect that most have only the haziest idea of what it would mean for their country. The slogans that move their hearts and stir their souls are directed against their enemies: Bush, the neo-cons, the religious right.
…
In an age when politics is choreographed, voters watch out for the moments when the public-relations facade breaks down and venom pours through the cracks. Their judgment is rarely favourable when it does. Barack Obama knows it. All last week, he was warning American liberals to stay away from the Palin family. He understands better than his supporters that it is not a politician’s enemies who lose elections, but his friends. [emphasis added]
“Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency,” said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.
The Obama website has a new feature that allows you to design and upload your own hope-tastic t-shirt designs. Users can then vote on their favorite entries, and the winner will presumably be put in production.
You can download a .zip file from the website with all the necessary logos and t-shirt outlines (Creative Suite required). Hmm, I wonder what kind of monstrosities our faithful Commentator readers could come up with? I’m hereby announcing our own Obama-rama t-shirt contest. Funny entries will be posted on the blog, and creator of the winningest design will get a beer or a sudsy tee … or something. Have at it. (Send your creations to [email protected], and as always, extra points awarded for Big Lebowski references.)
While the “Revolution & Communism” is perhaps the most absurd picture on there (so far), I think this picture of the clenched-fisted tools idolizing Muqtada al-Sadr as some kind of “anti-imperialist” hero beats it for sheer stupidity.
And is it just me, or is that a Coors logo and a small Budweiser logo on the reverse of Muqtada’s picture?
Really? The only reason? If you thought the aftermath of the 2000 election was ugly, just wait and see what happens when these little race-obsessed goblins go utterly berzerk in the event of an Obama defeat.
More and more, this race baiting stuff from Obama supporters looks to be designed to guilt-trip people into voting for their guy. So much for the post-racial candidate.
And while it’s absolutely true that there is some (I believe small) slice of voters who will let their inner Bull Connors out when the curtains close on the polling booth, I think that they are matched by both the absolute solidarity that Obama will get in the Afican-American vote and by the very real group of people – kinda like me – who are in no small part favorably disposed to him because of his skin color.
The Telegraph is reporting that Obama has a half-brother living in a slum in Kenya. The Independent also picked up the story. Obama briefly mentioned his half-brother in one of his memoirs, describing him only as “beautiful boy with a rounded head.”
Evidently, allocating time for Hillary Clinton to speak at the Democratic Convention in Denver is evidence of “white privilege” in action, at least according to Jo Ann Bowman at Blue Oregon:
Since I have been old enough to vote, the primary winner was the winner period. Of course normally the presidential primary winner was a white, male millionaire.
They were not expected to give airtime to the looser. [sic] They were not expected to have their caucus votes counted on the floor. Why have the rules changed since an African American Man has won the nomination?
It appears that Ms. Bowman, in her fit of sputtering outrage, seems to have forgotten Barack Obama’s keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention — even though he wasn’t even a candidate at the time. Why, it’s almost like they give special privileges to prominent members of the Party! Oh, the injustice of it all!
(All of which is not to mention, as Kari Chisholm does in the comments section to Bowman’s post, that primary losers often have prominent speaking roles at conventions.)