The Republic of T.

• Houston Obama mural on Flickr – Photo Sharing!
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• McSame on Flickr – Photo Sharing!
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• 5% "MAVERICK" 95% PRO BUSH on Flickr – Photo Sharing!
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• waterboarding is torture, and it is ALWAYS wrong on Flickr – Photo Sharing!
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Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for October 20th through October 21st:

• Progressive Voter Guide to Media and Technology | Media and Technology | AlterNet – This election, voters have a clear choice from the two major presidential candidates on whether the Internet should remain free and available to all, whether huge corporations should be allowed to own even greater concentrations of outlets, the extent to which you have a right to privacy online, and whether government will use technological developments readily available to make government more open.
• Progressive Voter Guide to Sex and Relationship Issues | Sex and Relationships | AlterNet – Sexuality — including who has the right to have sex with whom, at what age, in what states and even in what ways — has long been a centerpiece of U.S. culture wars. And today, issues from same-sex marriage to sex education are being hashed out in court and at the ballot box.
• Patrick Kampert: Why Sarah Palin Doesn’t Speak For Me – But the biggest reason I don't have a fish is that my driving is less than ideal. What if I accidentally cut off another car that's in my blind spot? Worse, what if I'm angry and impatient about an unrelated matter and it shows up in my driving? I'm not setting a real good example out there and don't want to drag down God's good name. Which brings me to Sarah Palin, and her all-too-self-assured assertions that she is the embodiment of the average, faith-filled American. I don't know what's more reckless — her statements attempting to link Barack Obama with terrorists or John McCain's hasty, uninformed selection of her in the first place.
• Paula Goldman: Don’t Move to Canada – Don't assume you can leave for a few years and expect that things will get better when your side is elected to power, because they probably won't. There are too many fires burning to have one individual fireman put them all out. No matter who is elected in a few weeks time, the future of our country is still going to come down to us. Ordinary people working more diligently than ever to make a difference. Now, more than ever, we need everyone to participate in finding solutions. Now, more than ever, we can not afford to sit back and expect others to solve our problems for us.
• Waiting for the Barbarians – In case you haven't heard, there's a guy running for president named Barack Hussein Osama Nobama. This Nobama was born outside America and secretly schooled in Islamic terrorism at a Wahhabi madrassa. He then moved to the United States to take up the radical '60s teachings of the Weather Underground's Bill Ayers, while also organizing for ACORN, a subprime-lending, voter fraud-committing collective of affirmative-action welfare queens. All this happened before he became an elitist celebrity advocate of socialism, infanticide, the sexual abuse of children and treason.
• Dowd: After W., le déluge – International Herald Tribune – In this season of darkness, as Charles Dickens described an earlier mob scene, I'm feeling as vengeful and bloodthirsty as Madame Defarge sharpening her knitting needles at the guillotine. I can't wait to see the tumbrels rumble up and down Wall Street picking up the heedless and greedy financial aristocracy that plundered and sundered free-market capitalism. Payback doesn't have to go as far as the French Revolution. The grifters shafting us don't have to shed blood, but they do have to give the money back. As far as these self-serving corporate con men and short-selling traders are concerned, off with their headsets.
• Omid Memarian: Why This Election is All About Character, Not Real Issues – With it becoming more and more obvious that the United States is experiencing its worst time economically, politically and morally since World War II, running a divisive, polarizing campaign based on fear and hatred is the last thing Americans need. Just a few weeks prior to the elections, it's now clear that John McCain, the war hero and John McCain, the 2008 Presidential candidate are two distinct personalities. He contradicts the essential values and norms that he fought for decades ago.
• TPMCafe | Talking Points Memo | Spreading the Wealth – The problem, you see, is not simply that Joe the Plumber does not want to pay taxes, and McCain says he's right. The problem is that Joe the Plumber doesn't want to reconcile two contradictory goods in his mind at the same time (the good of having a few hundred more dollars, the good of having paying customers, roads, etc.) and the media on his lawn says he's a "demographic."
• Truthdig – A/V Booth – Noam Chomsky: ‘There’s Nothing Wrong With Picking the Lesser of Two Evils’ – The renowned linguist and political philosopher tells The Real News that there is indeed a difference between the two major parties and their candidates, if only a narrow one. While they both serve elites, Chomsky says, the Democrats, over time, help people.
• Truthdig – A/V Booth – Logic Lessons With Sarah Palin: Gay Marriage Edition – Just to go out on a limb here, doesn’t supporting a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage on the federal level represent a very real form of “judgment” about the people and relationships that are granted the official stamp of legitimacy and those that aren’t? This consideration doesn’t seem to inform Sarah Palin’s stance on the issue, as evidenced by this clip from an interview Palin did over the weekend with the Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody. “I’m not going to be out there judging individuals, sitting in a seat of judgment telling what they can and can’t do, should and should not do,” she told Brody during their exchange, which was broadcast on Monday.
• TPMCafe | Talking Points Memo | Evil Eliciting the Challenge of a Conscious Good – The battle between "intensified 'Americanism'," by which Hartz means the kind of rabid nationalism McCain and Palin are now stoking and McCarthy stoked before them, is not a battle between liberals and conservatives. It is instead a battle between demagogues and rationalists, those who would rule through fear and division and those who believe in an enlightened progress. That's why Colin Powell's direct assault on the McCain campaign was so important. Playing his role as statesman, Powell endorsed Obama and highlighted the valour and sacrifice of a Muslim-American soldier, to push back against the forces of "intensified 'Americanism'."
• WoodMoor Village: A Call to Republicans – Can you please start communicating to your party leaders, at all levels, that enough is enough? Tell them you just don't want a party that engages and supports the kind of theopolitics of fear and hate that have marked the GOP for a long time. Please convey to them that an intellectually honest, compassionate, ideologically sound, party is worth having. A party that does not rely on fear of homosexuals, fear of minorities, fear of foreigners, fear of intellectuals, fear of non-Christians — one that does not brand opponents un-patriotic, un-American, terrorist sympathizers, "pinkos," communist, socialists, and baby-killers. A party that does not stoke the flames of racial discord, provide aid and comfort to supremacists and racists, assume that Christianism is, or should be, the religion of the realm, or malign dissenters from its own ranks.

It’s almost enough to make you feel sorry for John McCain. He’s got a bit of an identity crisis.

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I can and probably will have more to say about the level of hatred seen in this presidential campaign — with its blatant appeals to racism and xenophobia — but this is one particularly striking example from the Sacramento County Republicans.

Sacramento County Republican leaders Tuesday took down offensive material on their official party Web site that sought to link Sen. Barack Obama to Osama bin Laden and encouraged people to “Waterboard Barack Obama” – material that offended even state GOP leaders.

…Taking credit for the site (sacramentorepublicans.org) and its content was county party chairman Craig MacGlashan – husband of Sacramento County Supervisor Roberta MacGlashan.

The Bee asked MacGlashan about the content after seeking his reaction to hate-filled graffiti that was spray-painted over an Obama display on a fence at Fair Oaks Boulevard and Garfield Avenue.

…But he defended his Web site. “I’m aware of the content,” he said. “Some people find it offensive, others do not. I cannot comment on how people interpret things.”

MacGlashan said he would “consider people’s complaints” before taking any action.

By Tuesday night, much of the questionable material – which ranged from depicting Obama in a turban to attacking Michelle Obama – had been removed, replaced with political cartoons attacking Obama.

It’s something you have to see to believe. Well, maybe not, but here it is anyway.

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No, I’m not about to break out in a rendition of Starship’s hit from the 80s. I just wanted to make sure you saw this video of young girls’ messages to Sarah Palin.

Before I launch into this post, let me just be clear about one thing. I’m not sure of much anymore. But I am fairly certain that I shouldn’t be writing this, or much of anything having to do with politics these days. For starters, I’m not that relevant as a voter. Based on everything I’ve read, seen, and heard, as black gay male, a member of the upper middle class, a college-educated white collar worker, and a non-Christian and non-theist, who doesn’t reside in a southern state, a rust-belt state, a battle-ground state, a small town or a rural area, and someone far enough to the left to be out of the mainstream much of the time, I am one of the most irrelevant, least important voters in this election.

I am also not a “real American” living in the “real America.” At best, I am an “ersatz American.” (The use of the word “ersatz” automatically disqualifies me as a “real American.)”

But this is something I — and the rest of the country — already know and have known for a while.

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Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for October 20th from 10:22 to 13:13:

• Censure Michele Bachmann – On last night's episode of MSNBC's Hardball, Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota charged Barack Obama and other members of Congress with sharing "anti-American" views. Defending the McCain campaign's automated phone calls attacking Obama's judgment and character, Bachmann called for a news media "exposé" of the views of members of Congress. Bachmann thinks that anyone who disagrees with her personal political agenda is unpatriotic. But she is the one who has a lot to learn about what it means to love America and what it takes to make this country great, as Katrina vanden Heuvel eloquently explained to Chris Matthews in response to Bachmann's ignorant ravings.
• When the Gloves Come Off – Trust is the lifeblood of a democratic politics, just as faith and credit are the lifeblood of market economics. Each can be sustained in defiance of reality: a people can place its trust in demagogues, investors can bet their money on worthless assets. But only for a while. A day must come when the "pitiless crowbar of events" (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) breaks through the wall. That day has arrived.
• SPREADING THE WEALTH…. – For that matter, what's the opposite of "spreading" the wealth? Concentrating it, which is effectively what McCain wants to do with his own economic plan — keep as much wealth as possible at the top, and wait for it to trickle down. Jonathan Cohn had a terrific item, explaining why "spreading the wealth" is a perfectly sound and reasonable approach to tax policy, and pointed to Adam Smith for support.
• Michael Tomasky: The Republicans have lifted the lid off their rightwing id | Comment is free | The Guardian – It's true that we're hearing racial-code talk here and there. But the main fear tactic being employed now is something else. It's that Obama and his associates – and for that matter his supporters and even the regions of the country that he's destined to carry – are anti-American.' Last Friday, in North Carolina, Sarah Palin told a rally that she was proud to be "with all of you hard-working, very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation". She means here of course that there are anti-American areas of America, and they are where the liberals live, and the people there are voting for Mr Anti-America.
• Jared Bernstein: Ideology Takes a Breather, Maybe – What is ideology anyway, and what's so bad about it? The dictionary says that ideology is simply a set of beliefs that form the basis of a system. Nothing wrong with that. Where you run into trouble is when the ideology itself blocks the system from learning, from self-correcting.
• Dr. Dean Ornish: Something Good About the Economic Meltdown – I've heard statements like this over and over again. Suffering gets our attention and can be a powerful catalyst for transforming our lives for the better. Pain is bearable when it has meaning, when something good comes from it. Although no one looks for suffering, sometimes, despite our best efforts, there it is. How we deal with it can make all the difference in the world. We can understand its alchemy and the possibilities for transformation when it happens.
• Could We Blame the Financial Crisis on Too Much Testosterone? Harvard Researchers Say Yes | Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace | AlterNet – Economist Anna Dreber and anthropologist Coren Apicella theorize that Wall Street's red-suspendered boys — or as I think of them, the greedy architects of the new recession — can't help themselves because they have more testosterone than average, which makes them take big risks to earn big prizes. That's an advantage when chasing woolly mammoths with wooden spears, but it's likely to cause problems in money management.
• Predatory Scapegoating – Maybe now is not the time to be ungraciously partisan; perhaps in the middle of the tornado we "don't want to argue about causes," as Sarah Palin said of global warming. But let's make one thing crystal clear: neither this global economic catastrophe nor the impending plunge in our standard of living is the fault of poor blacks or other disenfranchised minorities. It should be obvious, I suppose: African-Americans are only about 13 percent of the population, and about 48 percent of them are homeowners. Yet I emphasize this because to listen to some widely exported theories by John McCain's surrogates and right-leaning radio shock jocks, you could get the impression that this all came about because penniless black slackers took out home loans they were just as unqualified for as the jobs they stole from more qualified white contenders.
• Talking Points Memo | On the Couch – I get the sense that the further he drifts from his (perhaps former) ideals, the angrier he gets at those who (in his mind) forced him to stray.
• Open Left:: Why Daddy Bloomberg Is Mad – What bee's in Bloomie's bonnet? Well, it's simple: rich, older men know best, and when anyone suggests otherwise, sometimes they flip out. This is all part of a NY-centric debate, but the implications are bigger: can the rich, the powerful, the elite and the class of incumbents write their own rules?
• Truthdig – Reports – The Idiots Who Rule America – Our oligarchic class is incompetent at governing, managing the economy, coping with natural disasters, educating our young, handling foreign affairs, providing basic services like health care and safeguarding individual rights. That it is still in power, and will remain in power after this election, is a testament to our inability to separate illusion from reality.

Step aside Christopher Buckley. Likewise, Lincoln Chafee and Jim Leach, Susan Eisenhower, Mrs. Hagel, Ms. Drew, Rep. Gilchrest, and others. Or at least make room for one more. Perhaps one of the most significant Republican endorsements for Barack Obama is now confirmed.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell announced Sunday that he will be voting for Sen. Barack Obama, citing the Democrat’s “ability to inspire” and the “inclusive nature of his campaign.”

“I think he is a transformational figure, he is a new generation coming onto the world stage, onto the American stage, and for that reason I’ll be voting for Sen. Barack Obama,” Powell said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Powell said he was concerned about what he characterized as a recent negative turn of Republican candidate Sen. John McCain’s campaign, such as the campaign’s attempts to tie Obama to former 1960s radical Bill Ayers.

“I think that’s inappropriate. I understand what politics is about — I know how you can go after one another, and that’s good. But I think this goes too far, and I think it has made the McCain campaign look a little narrow. It’s not what the American people are looking for,” he said.

Powell, a retired U.S. general and a Republican, was once seen as a possible presidential candidate himself.

Now, more cynical folks might say that Powell is still smarting from the embarrassment of his infamous U.N. performance on behalf of the Bush administration’s “war jones” re: Iraq. But he wouldn’t be the first Republican to be dismayed by the low road taken by the McCain campaign.

I’ve got at least three actual pieces of writing I’m working on. One that I’ve been working on for the last few days, and two more that cropped up as a result of my news/blog reading. But I’m facing the reality that I may have to abandon all three.

I spent my morning doing  this.

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Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for October 15th through October 17th:

• Steven G. Brant: When It All Falls Down – You see, if Barack Obama ushers in a "new American Century" based on such great American principles as "All people are created equal" and that we are really the "United States" not the divided states… coupled with such religious beliefs as "Love thy neighbor," this will — literally — be the "end of days" for people who believe in hate, divisiveness, and domination. And I just worry that they won't let their word view die without a fight. I know it's a crazy thought. But America is filled with some pretty crazy people. (Hey, it's a big country!) So…. what to do?
• Adam Kernan-Schloss: Eloquence–yuck – Eloquence has now become the GOP's newest four-letter word…and this from the party of Lincoln, our most eloquent president. Amazing….
• Tom Brokaw: Every Day I Say Aloud, ‘Timmy We Need to Talk’ | wowOwow – Personally, I like what I call this Tom Paine environment — so many voices and so many opportunities for citizens in even the most remote locations to have access to the world’s greatest newspapers and periodicals. The downside is that the culture thrives on the shouted voice rather than the thoughtful and more muted expression.
• Bruce Tenenbaum: Abe The Accountant – As America's wealthiest person, Warren Buffett, once said, "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." The preceding link, by the way, will take you to an article written by, of all people, conservative Republican Ben Stein, in which he also argues for higher taxes on the rich. Joe The Plumber, on the other hand, likes things the way they are. He thinks that increasing taxes on the very wealthy will be damaging to the economy, even if it means lowering his own taxes. So, where Barack Obama has Warren Buffett as an advisor, John McCain is taking his lead from Joe The Plumber. I'm going with Warren too.
• Sara Whitman: A New Level of Hate – As we all dissect the last debate and worry about the economy, the level of hate in this country just reached a new high. Or should I say low. In Illinois, an elementary school bus driver taunted a ten year-old boy, calling him "gay." He then, at the child's bus stop, encouraged other students to go beat him up.
• Paul Hipp: Hate Talk Express – Normally I try and stay away from the cheerleading but I think a bit of cheering and highly stylize schmaltz is in order here. The candidates are SO different. One candidate makes me feel like I am a suffocating hemorrhoid at a taping of The Lawrence Welk Show (sorry Lawrence). The other makes me feel all giddy and tingly inside, like I could fly away on a magic cloud of hope and possibility. See if you can guess which one is which.
• The 10 Biggest Differences Between Obama and McCain That Will Affect Your Daily Life | Election 2008 | AlterNet – From the fate of the Supreme Court to the future of Internet access, here are the 10 most important differences between Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain.
• Open Left:: The Myth and Power Of Joe The Plumber – The reason the story is so popular is almost certainly connected to the national, established media's continuing fetish for socially conservative whites s the dominant archetype for swing voters in America. This obsession has a long history, with an almost uninterrupted lineage dating from the silent majority, through the southern strategy, Reagan Democrats, soccer Moms, Bubbas, and on to "values voters" in our own decade. It is an obsession that came out frequently in this campaign in the hundreds of stories about Obama's supposed problems with socially conservative white Democrats, and how those problems posed a barrier to winning the Presidency. If you can't win the socially conservative white vote, you supposedly can't win national elections. Not-Joe the Not-Plumber is just the latest instance of this type of story, which grants an absurd amount of power to socially conservative whites in our national political discourse.
• Open Left:: What Joe the Plumber Really Means – Joe the Plumber is the latest of many colorful, mythic characters to grace the nation's presidential stage – an individual who epitomizes how our nation conducts its politics. Our democracy is kabuki theater, replete with symbolic archetypal Americans, some used as scapegoats (Reagan's "welfare queens") others used for fearmongering (Harry & Louise) and still others cited as mythic idols (Joe the Plumber).
• blackagendareport.com – Freedom Rider: If “That One” Wins – Obama is truly admired, even loved, by many white people. His appeals to hope and change are indeed potent. The consultants who marketed those phrases certainly knew the power behind them. … However, it has to be pointed out that lofty campaign talking points can't placate people who are proudly and openly racist. They still don't to see a black person in the position of ultimate political authority, not even an eloquent, biracial, photogenic politician who never addresses black people's needs and who even has a white grand mother to trot out at convenient times. The very idea that a black man will be president makes these people very, very angry.
• During Gay History Month, we have to make sure gay and lesbian citizens count – We’re in the midst of Gay History Month, an ideal time for this question: How much progress has been made in the 40 years since the gay liberation movement began? Gays and lesbians entered American public life in the late 1960s, with the Stonewall Rebellion in New York City, sparked by a police raid on a gay bar. Since then, an intense campaign, marked by academic study, political lobbying and anti-defamation work has demanded recognition and respect for gays and lesbians. Much has changed; much has stayed the same.
• Peter Wolson: America’s Racism: Hatred of “The Other” in the 2008 Presidential Election – In view of white America's traditional racism since slavery, Obama's candidacy shows enormous racial progress. Obama himself considers racism "a wash" when comparing those voting for him because he is black and those who hold it against him. But pervasive fears of his assassination, incorrectly stereotyping him as a Muslim, considering him an uppity elitist, or the question, "Is the country ready for a black president," suggests that racism can cause him to lose the election.
• John Lewis, George Wallace and John McCain – Jack & Jill Politics – McCain can push back all he likes, yet he went out on a limb to stump for George Wallace Jr in Alabama (a state far from Arizona) at pricey $250-1000 a head events. McCain did this even AFTER Wallace was pilloried for his many speeches to the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group that has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The CCC wants to use military force against immigration and is opposed to “race-mixing.” You can imagine how afraid the CCC are of Barack Obama. Wallace later lost in the primaries to Luther Strange, a more moderate Republican who sits on the board of Talladega College, one of Alabama’s oldest historically black colleges.

• iReadFast – Home page
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This picture jumped out at me yesterday, during my morning news reading

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The image and the story behind it rang a bell for me. (And not just because it’s a story from my home state.)

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Hollywood here I come!

OK. Not really. But I’m beginning to wonder if I’d actually have a future as a casting director, only because of that last post, and this description of the last Obama-McCain debate.

On the stage it looked like a President and the Richard Dreyfus character, a gnarly device to make a President look even more Presidential. Even, God forbid, an act of terrorism could not elect McCain. In wartime, voters are not looking for a geezer to save the day.

So, maybe my casting in that instance was spot on.

It seems that, in the waning days of his presidency, George W. Bush has at least one friend left in the world, when it comes to Italiian prime minister Silvio Berlsconi.

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I’m with Liza. I’m totally going to see this.

OK. It’s not the cast I would have chosen. Who cares? This looks totally worth getting a babysitter for.

And now, just for fun….

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Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for October 14th from 16:04 to 16:32:

• Truthdig – Reports – America’s Political Cannibalism – It is no longer our economy but our democracy that is in peril. It was the economic meltdown of Yugoslavia that gave us Slobodan Milosevic. It was the collapse of the Weimar Republic that vomited up Adolf Hitler. And it was the breakdown in czarist Russia that opened the door for Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Financial collapses lead to political extremism. The rage bubbling up from our impoverished and disenfranchised working class, glimpsed at John McCain rallies, presages a looming and dangerous right-wing backlash.
• Truthdig – Reports – McCain’s Mob – Are we witnessing the re-emergence of the far right as a power in American politics? Has John McCain, inadvertently perhaps, become the midwife of a new movement built around fear, xenophobia, racism and anger?
• Vote Obama. McCain lacks the character and temperament to be president. And Palin is simply a disgrace. – By Christopher Hitchens – Slate Magazine – The most insulting thing that a politician can do is to compel you to ask yourself: "What does he take me for?" Precisely this question is provoked by the selection of Gov. Sarah Palin. I wrote not long ago that it was not right to condescend to her just because of her provincial roots or her piety, let alone her slight flirtatiousness, but really her conduct since then has been a national disgrace. It turns out that none of her early claims to political courage was founded in fact, and it further turns out that some of the untested rumors about her—her vindictiveness in local quarrels, her bizarre religious and political affiliations—were very well-founded, indeed. Moreover, given the nasty and lowly task of stirring up the whack-job fringe of the party's right wing and of recycling patent falsehoods about Obama's position on Afghanistan, she has drawn upon the only talent that she apparently possesses. It therefore seems to me that the Republican Party has invited not just defeat but discredit this year, and that both its nominees for the highest offices in the land should be decisively repudiated, along with any senators, congressmen, and governors who endorse them.
• Lionel Beehner: Please Stop With The Main Street-Versus-Wall Street Rhetoric – Bail us out. Raise our taxes. Do whatever. But politicians across America please stop casting the debate over this financial mess in such lame yin-and-yang prose. It's not about Main Street versus Wall Street. Get it out of your cliché-loving, lemming-like minds.
• On Columbus Day, correcting Columbus’ legacy – There was a time in this country once when celebrating the feats of Columbus and his successors was less complicated. Only a generation ago, students did not learn the full extent of Columbus’ impact on the peoples who inhabited this continent. But let’s set the historical record straight.
• Being an Arab is no slur – In his rebuke to his supporter, McCain counterposed being Arab with being a decent family man. That’s news to me, and to the legions of decent, Arab-American family men out there!
• Op-Ed Columnist – The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama – NYTimes.com – At McCain-Palin rallies, the raucous and insistent cries of “Treason!” and “Terrorist!” and “Kill him!” and “Off with his head!” as well as the uninhibited slinging of racial epithets, are actually something new in a campaign that has seen almost every conceivable twist. They are alarms. Doing nothing is not an option.

• One True Media – slideshows, free photo sharing, facebook app, slide shows, MySpace slideshows, MySpace codes, free video sharing, video montages.
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Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for October 14th from 13:47 to 15:59:

• TPMCafe | Talking Points Memo | The Ones That Got Away: The Color Line – We see searing racism, bigotry, ignorance clearly illuminated but there are also other murkier, less answerable questions. Will an Obama presidency make inroads with regards to this kind of racism because Obama is black–do his policies address these issues? What does it mean to have a black president–and is this even the most relevant question? Will the reality of "first black president" carry the same weight as the words do?
• What Right Wingers Mean When They Call Obama a “Socialist” | The American Prospect – The hysterical accusations of socialism from conservatives echo similar accusations leveled at black leaders in the past, as though the quest for racial parity were simply a left-wing plot. Obama may not actually be a socialist or communist, but his election would strike another powerful blow to the informal racial hierarchy that has existed in America since the 1960s, when it ceased being enforced by law. This hierarchy, which holds that whiteness is synonymous with American-ness, is one conservatives are now instinctively trying to preserve. Like black civil-rights activists of the 1960s, Obama symbolizes the destruction of a social order they see as fundamentally American, which is why terms like "socialism" are used to describe the threat.
• How McCain Became MacBeth – NAM – This weekend John McCain turned into John Macbeth. At a rally recently he was confronted with the vitriolic rage of his supporters who screamed “Off with his head!”, “Terrorist!” “Traitor!” and, the old lynch mob’s favorite, “Kill him!” in reference to Senator Obama. He was repeating his criticism of his presidential candidate rival, but upon hearing those nasty chants the senator cringed and grew perceptibly older, his shoulders drooped. As he struggled to find the words to pacify the angry horde, McCain went off script. “I admire Sen. Obama and his accomplishments,” he said. “I will respect him and I want everyone to be respectful, and let's make sure we are." The crowd, not surprisingly, booed him.
• Make a Black Friend? – NAM – I FREQUENT a cheap restaurant in my city’s Chinatown where the white patrons, often tourists, are consistently given prettier menus and more courteous service than the locals. I tend to get the single-ply napkins, but white customers use fancy, two-ply napkins with embossed flowers. The unequal treatment leaves me disgruntled every time. But I try to brush it off because, ultimately, aren’t there bigger issues at stake? Isn’t it all quite petty?
• Max Blumenthal: How Sarah Palin Has Excluded African-Americans – On April 29, 2008, 14 leaders of Alaska's black community met with Gov. Sarah Palin to voice discontent with her minority hiring record. Palin's response, which was first reported by journalist Earl Ofari Hutchinson, only compounded her icy relationship with her African-American constituents.
• Talking Points Memo | My God is Bigger Than Your God – In case you missed it over the weekend, a minister who gave the invocation at a McCain rally in Iowa couched his prayer in terms I've never heard before: God's own reputation is at stake in this election, he said, because so many Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists around the world are praying for an Obama victory that if Obama wins, they'll think "their god is bigger" than the Christian god.
• The Conservative Thugs in the Audience – 236.com – The Room – On many other occasions plenty of right-wing audience members have made their displeasure known to me in ways that made me wish I had a bodyguard. When liberals get offended by a joke, they look down their noses at me, tell me I'm stupid, and offer to have a discussion where they can prove me wrong. Conservatives aren't interested in discussion. They want to take me out in the parking lot.
• The Washington Monthly – If the knock on McCain supporters is that they're too often unhinged, doesn't tearing up a poster held by a young woman offer evidence that the criticism is accurate?

• Christopher Columbus: The Untold Story
  From his very first contact with native people, Columbus had their domination in mind. For example, on October 14, 1492, Columbus wrote in his journal, "with fifty men they can all be subjugated and made to do what is required of them." [5] These were not mere words: after his second voyage, Columbus sent back a consignment of natives to be sold as slaves. [6]
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• Docudharma:: Christopher Columbus & His Crimes Against Humanity
  The religious beliefs of Apocalyptic Christianity were yet another one of Columbus' motivations for setting sail; consequently, it was the most illogical motivation he possessed.
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• The Native Peoples, Christopher Columbus, Social Studies, Glencoe
  Columbus, in need of a cargo other than gold and spices to ship to Spain, decided to send the Taino slaves as a show of the wealth available in the New World. He loaded the “best men and women” onto ships and sent them off to Europe, thus beginning the widespread enslavement of the native peoples.
  (tags: politics)
• Jack Weatherford, Examining the reputation of Christopher Columbus
  His marauding band hunted Indians for sport and profit – beating, raping, torturing, killing, and then using the Indian bodies as food for their hunting dogs. Within four years of Columbus' arrival on Hispaniola, his men had killed or exported one-third of the original Indian population of 300,000.
  (tags: politics history)
• THE SLAUGHTER THAT CAME WITH THE ARRIVAL OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
  They forced their way into native settlements, slaughtering everyone they found there, including small children, old men, pregnant women, and even women who had just given birth. They hacked them to pieces, slicing open their bellies with their swords as though they were so many sheep herded into a pen. They even laid wagers on whether they could manage to slice a man in two at a stroke, or cut an individual's head from his body, or disembowel him with a single blow of their axes. They grabbed suckling infants by the feet and, ripping them from their mothers' breasts, dashed them headlong against the rocks.
  (tags: politics history)
• AmericanHeritage.com / Christopher Columbus, Hero and Villain
  After exploring hundreds of islands but failing to find much gold, Columbus returned to Spain in 1496. He kidnapped some 500 natives to serve as slaves in the Old World, and half of them died en route.
  (tags: politics history)
• Christopher Columbus – American Indian Genocide
  In retrospect, if he had instead landed in a non-pacifist country, such as that of the Iroquois or Maya, history would have turned out differently. Their Warriors would have fought back ferociously, very probably ending his voyage on the American side of the Atlantic. If this had happened, and no Europeans had appeared for another century, population growth and technology development would have reduced the possibility of European colonization considerably. However, history turned out the way it did and no amount of fantasizing can change that.
  (tags: politics history)
• 9.11 – Columbus' History of Genocide
  Setting up shop on the large island he called Espa–ola (today Haiti and the Dominican Republic), he promptly instituted policies of slavery (encomiendo) and systematic extermination against the native Taino population.
  (tags: politics history)
• Lifehacker Top 10: Top 10 Web Tools for Election Season
  (tags: politics lifehacker)
• Bear Market on Flickr – Photo Sharing!
  (tags: photocredit)

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for October 10th through October 13th:

• American Creation: Should We Celebrate Columbus Day? – However exciting it may be for us to remember Columbus as a pure-hearted explorer, the historical record cannot be ignored. As a result, it is plainly clear that Columbus was not the benevolent explorer we often consider him to be in American popular culture. Instead, Columbus was very much a tyrant who used religion to justify his acts of violence towards the native people of the "New World." Again, Alan Taylor points out what Columbus' real intentions were when it came to the native people of the "New World:"
• Columbus Day | culturekitchen – Together, Columbus Day and Thanksgiving are the foundation myths of America. I have been ambivalent, in the litteral meaning of the word, towards Columbus Day for years now. I celebrate America and Columbus' "discovery" of the "New World" because the result of his discovery and the ultimate founding of America is that my family, myself included, is alive and thriving today. Without America, my family would have been exterminated in the genocide of Nazi Germany if not before that in the genocide of the pogroms in Tsarist Russia and later Stalin's genocide in the Soviet Union. But I am reminded every Columbus day of the genocides on which the founding of America was based. My family had a refuge from genocide because of a previous genocide committed against the natives of America. How's THAT for ambivalence?
• Better to Be… – Swampland – TIME – Watch the tape of the guy screaming, "He's a terrorist!" McCain seems to shudder at that, he rolls his eyes… and I thought for a moment he'd admonish the man. But he didn't. And now he's selling the Ayres non-story full-time. Yes, yes, it's all he has. True enough: he no longer has his honor. But we are on the edge of some real serious craziness here and it would be nice if McCain did the right thing and told his more bloodthirsty supporters to go home and take a cold shower. But McCain hasn't done the right thing all year. His campaign is appalling, as the New York Times editorial board said today–and more, it is a national disgrace.
• Deborah Hargreaves: We should take the axe to these architects of downfall | Comment is free | The Guardian – Banks are supposed to be risk-averse institutions. They are custodians of our money, and we expect them to protect it. But it seems the current generation of bankers has forgotten this age-old adage and become carried away with the idea of turning their retail networks into international powerhouses. Now that gamble has not worked, they have come running to us to help them out.
• Kristof: Can this be pro-life? – International Herald Tribune – The Bush administration this month is quietly cutting off birth control supplies to some of the world's poorest women in Africa. Thus the paradox of a "pro-life" administration adopting a policy whose result will be tens of thousands of additional abortions each year – along with more women dying in childbirth. The saga also spotlights a clear difference between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain.