My Dearest Barack: A collection of letters that student Dylan Hansen-Fliedner wrote back to the Obama campaign, in response to donation requests.
posted by growabrain
on Dec 1, 2012 -
16 comments
Charlie Pierce is a longtime sportswriter and author who has, among other things, reported for
Grantland,
Slate, and the
Boston Globe, paneled on
more than a few games of
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!, and
fished diapers out of trees as a state forest ranger. He's also made a name for himself as one of the sharpest and most incisive political columnists since Molly Ivins. The lead writer for
Esquire's Politics Blog ever since a
caustic article on former Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell
cost him his Globe job, Pierce has churned out
an uninterrupted stream of clever, colorful, and challenging commentary on the 2012 election season and its implications for the nation's future, dispatches often seething with eviscerative anger but shot through with deep love of (or perhaps grief for) country. Look inside for a selection of Pierce's most vital works for some edifying Election Eve reading.
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posted by Rhaomi
on Nov 5, 2012 -
73 comments
Progressives and the Ron Paul fallacies:
Ron Paul’s candidacy is a mirror held up in front of the face of America’s Democratic Party and its progressive wing, and the image that is reflected is an ugly one; more to the point, it’s one they do not want to see because it so violently conflicts with their desired self-perception. [more inside]
posted by troll
on Dec 31, 2011 -
340 comments
Categories as fundamental as fact and fiction, news and entertainment, gender and sexuality, have eroded away. In literature and architecture, in cuisine, in music, in fashion and furnishings, everywhere, everything—it’s fusion and mix.
Barack Obama emerged as a literal embodiment of this age. To educated people, especially younger people with generally progressive views, other candidates suddenly looked parochial by comparison—or simply outdated. In his ethnicity and biography and in his personality and politics, Obama, the conciliator, was above all a combiner. Because he was from virtually everywhere—Kenya, Indonesia, Honolulu, Harvard, Chicago’s South Side—he was also from nowhere. The pastiche of his persona made him “his own man” in a new sense of the term.
On the Politics of Pastiche and Depthless Intensities: The Case of Barack Obama
posted by Rumple
on Aug 25, 2011 -
22 comments
In a 32 page
report to Congress [pdf] President Obama concludes:
...the current U.S. military operations in Libya are consistent
with the War Powers Resolution and do not under that law require
further congressional authorization, because U.S. military
operations are distinct from the kind of “hostilities”
contemplated by the Resolution’s 60 day termination provision.
Now, the
New York Times reports that this legal opinion was reached by rejecting the views of top lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department. It is instructive to
compare President Obama's actions with those of his predecessor, George W. Bush.
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posted by ennui.bz
on Jun 20, 2011 -
240 comments
During his campaign, skeptics warned that Barack Obama was nothing but a "beautiful loser," a progressive purist whose uncompromising idealism would derail his program for change. But as president, Obama has proved to be just the opposite — an ugly winner. Over and over, he has shown himself willing to strike unpalatable political bargains to secure progress, even at the cost of alienating his core supporters. This bloodless, if effective, approach to governance has created a perilous disconnect: By any rational measure, Obama is the most accomplished and progressive president in decades, yet the only Americans fired up by the changes he has delivered are Republicans and Tea Partiers hellbent on reversing them. Heading into the November elections, Obama's approval ratings are mired in the mid-40s, and polls reflect a stark enthusiasm gap: Half of all Republicans are "very" excited about voting this fall, compared to just a quarter of Democrats. But if the passions of Obama's base have been deflated by the compromises he made to secure historic gains like the Recovery Act, health care reform and Wall Street regulation, that gloom cannot obscure the essential point: This president has delivered more sweeping, progressive change in 20 months than the previous two Democratic administrations did in 12 years. The
Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson argues
The Case for Obama.
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posted by Rhaomi
on Oct 15, 2010 -
177 comments
BBC World Service has over 500 audio documentaries you can download. The subject matter is incredibly wide ranging, for example,
internet cafés,
the influence of Islamic art on William Morris,
South African female AIDS activist Thembi Ngubane,
Yiddish,
the importance of cows,
novelist Chinua Achebe,
financial risk management,
Obama as an intellectual,
the physical and emotional effects of a car crash and many, many more. If the quantity and variety are overwhelming, you can subscribe to a
podcast, which delivers a new documentary to you every single day.
posted by Kattullus
on May 8, 2010 -
22 comments
Rapper Shaun Boothe is now midway through his 12 part series of "unauthorized biographies", which showcase short history lessons about some of the major black figures of our time. Thus far, he's covered
James Brown,
Bob Marley (my favorite),
Muhammed Ali,
Martin Luther King (and briefly, Barack Obama),
Jimi Hendrix, and
Sean "Puffy" Combs. He's gotten some
play and
good press from major underground hip-hop media, due next in the series is a biography of Oprah Winfrey.
posted by rollbiz
on Jan 11, 2010 -
13 comments
Do you feel disappointed in government? Does Obama seem a little too meek for the Presidency? Do you wish he'd make larger structural reforms? Maybe, suggests Matt Taibbi, there's
an answer.
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posted by jock@law
on Oct 23, 2009 -
43 comments
In 2009,
a remarkably gifted politician, confronting a remarkably difficult set of challenges, will
have to learn to say "No we can't",
Guantánamo will prove a moral minefield,
economic recovery will be invisible to the naked eye,
governments must prepare for the day they stop financial guarantees,
we will judge our commitment to sustainability,
scientists should research the causes of religion,
we will all be potential online paparazzi,
English will have more words than any other language (but it's meaningless),
Afghanistan will see a surge of Western (read: American) troops,
Iran will continue its nuclear quest while
diplomacy lies in shambles,
the sea floor is the new frontier,
we should rethink aging,
(non-)voters will continue to thwart the European project --
but cheap travel will continue to buoy it --
though it has some unfinished business to attend to, and
a Nordic defence bond will blossom.
The Economist: The World in 2009.
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posted by goodnewsfortheinsane
on Nov 27, 2008 -
31 comments
Is there no end to the shady associations of Barack Obama? Crack journalist Dave Barry has published photographic proof that
the president-elect is a Lawn Ranger. What's a Lawn Ranger? Glad you asked. Dave Barry has written about this nefarious organization not
once, but
twice and their strange and eldritch rites have been profiled on
WILL public television of Central Illinois, where the organization has its headquarters, in the town of Arcola, where they
parade every year.
posted by Kattullus
on Nov 14, 2008 -
19 comments
Making It, in which a young, black, upstart politician rises through the Chicago political scene by having his opposition stricken from the ballot, turning against his endorser, and redistricting himself into a fundraising monster.
[more inside]
posted by Weebot
on Jul 14, 2008 -
32 comments
