U.S. bloggers were outraged apparently. Australian bloggers were just as vocal.

Open Democracy used their signature cartoon to comment. They also quoted online media service Crikey.

from Crikey …..

Our Johnny keeps the Obamas out

Richard Farmer writes:

It is always a bit embarrassing in Washington when there's a new President. The old one hangs around in the White House for two and a half months after the election while the new one prepares his team to take over.

The normal thing to make the home switching as painless as possible is for the incoming President to take up residence a couple of weeks before the official inauguration in Blair House, the President's guesthouse, managed by the Office of the Chief of Protocol at 1651 Pennsylvania Avenue. This January things have been different and Washington insiders were puzzled as to why Barack Obama, his wife and two children were spending their time in a Washington Hotel.

Did this mark a new point in relations between incoming and outgoing, Democrat and Republican? Was George W Bush practicing some final form of revenge?

At last such unwholesome speculation has ended with the Washington Post revealing this morning “Blair House Mystery Solved: It's John Howard”. The veil is lifted, said the report. “We now know who is booked at Blair House, kicking President-elect Barack Obama and his family to the waiting list and across Lafayette Park to the Hay-Adams Hotel. The only overnight visitor at the presidential guest manse is none other than John Howard, a former Australian prime minister and leading member of President Bush's coalition of the willing in Iraq.”

Our Johnny will be in Washington to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom from his retiring friend George Dubya on 13 January. Whereas fellow recipients of that honour, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, declined the presidential invitation to stay at Blair House and found private accommodation the Howard entourage accepted the invitation to bunk down at Blair House on the night of 12 January.

The Obama family are now scheduled to move in on 15 January.

the value of a self-important rattus …..

 Jeremy Sear used his usual sarcasm at An Onymous Lefty:

Our exiled former leader (only overseas can he escape the cruel derision of his former subjects) tries his hand at humility:

“This is very nice, but it is a compliment to the country”, says John Howard of the ironically-named “Medal of Freedom” he's about to accept from Bush.

I think I speak more on behalf of Australians than you do, John, when I say - please, feel free to keep that “compliment” from George W Bush all for yourself. No need to pass it on to the country that rejected you. No, really, we insist. Don't ascribe it to us - we don't want it, the man who's giving it, or the man who's receiving it.

Thanks, but no thanks.

I still represent you, even if you don't want me

Scott at GrodsCorp explains through a series of links why those on the left are laughing.

Former Prime Minister John Howard is set to receive the US Medal Of Freedom from outgoing President George W. Bush. Of course, the award has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Howard was one of only a few leaders who pledged his full support for the flailing President in the face of overwhelming opposition from most of the world.

The Medal Of Freedom is awarded to people who “work to improve the lives of their citizens and… promote democracy, human rights and peace abroad.”

I could only fit one link on each “achievement”, so what are some other examples of John Howard’s commitment to improving lives, promoting democracy, defending human rights, and fighting for peace?

UPDATE: Of John Howard, MK sez: “Humble as always.” The larfs!

Howard’s “achievements” recognised

The reference to MK is to a post on right wing blog Crusader Rabbit that defines its purpose in no uncertain terms as: “Radical islam has two allies here in the West - the Left and political correctness. The fight is with all three.” The post:

LiveNews - Former prime minister John Howard will receive the US Presidential Medal of Freedom at a White House ceremony next week. The award is said to be the highest civilian honour bestowed by a United States president. Mr Howard is being honoured for his role in fighting terrorism and for standing by the US as an ally during his 11 years as prime minister.

“Yes, I am honoured by it, more because of the compliment it pays to our country Australia,” Mr Howard told ABC Radio. “It's an indication of the very close relationship between our two countries and I'm very pleased that during the time as prime minister I was able to contribute too.”

Humble as always.

Good on ya John Howard

Soon both Howard and Bush will both be men of the past. History can make its judgment on their political contributions. The man of the present may well remember Howard's remarks in early 2007:

“I think he's wrong. I think that will just encourage those who want to completely destabilise and destroy Iraq, and create chaos and a victory for the terrorists to hang on and hope for an Obama victory,” Mr Howard told the Nine Network.

“If I were running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and be praying as many times as possible for a victory not only for Obama but also for the Democrats.”

Obama blasts Howard on Iraq

Will Obama resist Zionist pressure and reveal his progressive side on Israel? Writing from the US, Antony Loewenstein isn’t optimistic

I’m currently in the US on a book tour and I’ve been struck by the ubiquitous belief that Obama will soon reveal his progressive side. He’s yet to assume office but that he’ll be a conservative Democrat on foreign policy is denied by realists and dreamers alike.

A few nights ago at the New York Public Library I attended a fascinating discussion between former Speaker of the Israeli Knesset Avraham Burg and historian Omer Bartov. Burg says that Israel must get past its Holocaust mentality in order to achieve a lasting peace in the region. He fears that this is unlikely to be achieved on current trends. A longer report on the evening by my friend, blogger and writer Phil Weiss, is here.

Burg’s new book, The Holocaust is Over, We Must Rise From its Ashes, expands these arguments thoroughly. The debate was both necessary and illuminating, not least because it revealed the paucity of thinking in the Zionist establishment.

Burg, a religious Jew who has spent most of his adult life immersed in the Zionist movement, now wants an honest appraisal of the damage this ideology has wreaked on his country and the Palestinians. “We’re so traumatised by the memories [of the Holocaust]“, he said, “and maybe we’ll never get over it. Maybe a nation can’t get past it.”

“We monopolise suffering,” he continued. “Holocausts only happen to us. We must be more generous to others. The Holocaust must be removed from nearly daily use and manipulation in Israeli society.”

Burg and Bartov talked excessively about “utopian” ideas for Israel and barely mentioned the Palestinians. It was a glaring omission - although when asked, Burg said he believed the window for a two-state solution had virtually shut, leaving a need to seriously discuss alternatives - and reflected the trauma the conflict has inflicted on all players. Burg painted an Israeli society afraid to debate ideas, fearful of taking risks, with the Arabs and the Messianic Jews in the West Bank and Israel proper threatening the very existence (and establishment) of a truly secular nation. “As soon as the Arabs declare peace with us,” lamented Burg, “Israel will have a profound clash internally between the theocrats and democrats.”

Afterwards at dinner, with The Israel Lobby co-author John Mearsheimer, historian Norman Finkelstein, blogger Phil Weiss and others, the argument was put forward that because younger American Jews are increasingly embarrassed by Israel’s occupation policies — studies bear this out, and indicate less ethnic identification (because of intermarriage and other factors) with the concept of a Jewish nation — support for Israel is declining, forcing more moderates to the fore. I’m far from convinced. Older hardliners still hold the balance of power — and were just promoted into Obama’s cabinet. Although the stranglehold of the Zionist old guard is clearly crumbling — witness the growing global public recognition of Palestinian suffering — the situation on the ground remains dire.

The Zionist lobby is still immensely powerful in Washington. Many younger Jews simply refuse to get involved in any organisations, frustrated with the myopic mindset. The West Bank occupation deepens every day. The UN even reported this week that Israel has refused to allow spices, kitchenware, glassware, yarn and paper into the Gaza Strip. None of these facts seem to disturb the Jewish leadership in America; they merely encourage Israel to tighten its noose around the territories.

Obama has major challenges to even address any of these issues yet seems determined, at this early stage, to ignore the more uncomfortable facts in front of him. With the appointment by of a hawkish national security team, including hardline Zionist Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, it’s become clear that no strong anti-war voices will have the ear of the new leader. Neo-conservatism is not dead as a movement; it has merely changed its political stripes. A military strike against Iran, as just one example, remains firmly on the table. Wishful thinking will not change this brutal reality.

The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill doused optimistic expectations in The Guardian:

“Obama’s starry-eyed defenders have tried to downplay the importance of his cabinet selections, saying Obama will call the shots, but the ruling elite in this country see it for what it is. Karl Rove, ‘Bush’s Brain’, called Obama’s cabinet selections, ‘reassuring’, which itself is disconcerting, but neoconservative leader and former McCain campaign staffer Max Boot summed it up best. ‘I am gobsmacked by these appointments, most of which could just as easily have come from a President McCain,’ Boot wrote.”

Israelis are reportedly pleased that Obama’s choices are unlikely to press the Jewish state for any major concessions while the Palestinians are understandably concerned.

“I was frankly surprised by this choice,” Manar Shorbagy, an expert on American foreign policy who teaches at the American University in Cairo, said. “Obama’s talking about bringing diplomacy back to a US foreign policy that has been militarised under President Bush. Senator Clinton has different ideas. She voted for the Iraq war and has supported many things Bush has done in his two terms.”

Maintenance of the status-quo — Israel’s settlement project expands, apartheid in the West Bank worsens and Gazans are continually strangled under collective punishment — remains the likely future. Without a serious international push towards resolution, Israel will forever increase its colonial project, making a two-state solution an utter impossibility. Ironically, the mainstream Jewish Diaspora leadership remains mute about this possibility. Inherently, they support a one-state answer, where, in a few years time, Arabs will outnumber Jews. What will they say then?

While it’s encouraging that a growing number of leading pundits are speaking publicly against Israel’s race to enforce its territorial gains, Israel suffers no real tangible price for flouting UN resolutions and breaking international law. The Holocaust is the eternal moral shroud with which the Jewish state protects itself.

What is desperately needed, as articulated by conservative International Herald Tribune columnist Roger Cohen this week, is the following:

“Imagine Ehud Olmert, the outgoing Israeli prime minister, saying this to Barack Obama:

‘The United States has been wrong to write Israel a blank check every year; wrong to turn a blind eye to the settlements in the West Bank; wrong not to be more explicit about the need to divide Jerusalem; wrong to equip us with weaponry so sophisticated we now believe military might is the answer to all our problems; and wrong in not helping us reach out to Syria. Your prospective secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said during the campaign that ‘The United States stands with Israel, now and forever.’ Well, that’s not good enough. You need to stand against us sometimes so we can avoid the curse of eternal militarism.”

If only more politicians across the Western world could see that their “pro-Israel” stance is killing the state they love.

Obama’s core economic team has been revealed to consist of New York Federal Reserve Bank President Timothy Geithner as Treasury secretary, Larry Summers as White House economic director, Peter Orszag as head of the Congressional Budget Office and Christina Romer as head of the Council of Economic Advisers.

These are some very interesting picks.

Geithner is of course already well known and respected as head of the NY Fed.

Orszag has an interest in health policy and is a protege of the fiscally conservative centrist Robert Rubin. He also has a blog.

Larry Summers of course needs little introduction as he was a centre of a little storm in a tea cup over factually correct comments made about differences in the variances of male and female IQ though interpreted in a sufficiently loose way as to make him fodder for PC activists. He is also an economic rationalist par excellence willing to go wherever his economic logic takes him, a trait which also landed him in a spot of bother years ago when he wrote a (again logically correct) memo arguing that pollution has a lower opportunity cost in developing economies.

Romer is a very interesting pick indeed as she and her husband are well known for their work in New Growth Theory and the impact of taxes on macroeconomic:

That the Romers are so well-regarded by their peers of both parties has many economists cheered that the Obama administration is going for the top minds in the field rather than those who adhere most closely to party lines. The Romers’ work has even been cited by Republicans as supporting the idea that tax increases negatively impact economic output.
Much of Ms. Romer’s work has been on macroeconomic history – studying, for example, the causes of the Great Depression, something that proves quite valuable now as the U.S. economy faces down a similar crisis.

Here is her contribution to the Encylopaedia of Economics on business cycles:

The empirical evidence is strongly on the side of the view that deviations from full employment are often the result of spending shocks. Monetary policy, in particular, appears to have played a crucial role in causing business cycles in the United States since World War II. For example, the severe recessions of both the early 1970s and the early 1980s were directly attributable to decisions by the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates. On the expansionary side, the inflationary booms of the mid-1960s and the late 1970s were both at least partly due to monetary ease and low interest rates. The role of money in causing business cycles is even stronger if one considers the era before World War II. Many of the worst prewar depressions, including the recessions of 1908, 1921, and the Great Depression of the 1930s, were to a large extent the result of monetary contraction and high real interest rates. In this earlier era, however, most monetary swings were engendered not by deliberate monetary policy but by financial panics, policy mistakes, and international monetary developments.

Of interest to libertarians, one of her papers co-authored with her husband is sceptical of the starve the beast (PDF) theory:

The hypothesis that decreases in taxes reduce future government spending is often cited as a reason for cutting taxes. However, because taxes change for many reasons, examinations of the relationship between overall measures of taxation and subsequent spending are plagued by problems of reverse causation and omitted variable bias. To derive more reliable estimates, this paper examines the behavior of government expenditures following legislated tax changes that narrative sources suggest are largely uncorrelated with other factors affecting spending. The results provide no support for the hypothesis that tax cuts restrain government spending; indeed, the point estimates suggest that tax cuts may increase spending. The results also indicate that the main effect of tax cuts on the government budget is to induce subsequent legislated tax increases. Examination of four episodes of major tax cuts reinforces these conclusions

Update:

The first knives are out. Here is a whinge from the left wing Nation:

Not a single, solitary, actual dyed-in-the-wool progressive has, as far as I can tell, even been mentioned for a position in the new administration. Not one. Remember this is the movement that was right about Iraq, right about wage stagnation and inequality, right about financial deregulation …[etc]

And yet, no one who comes from the part of American political and intellectual life that has given birth to all of these ideas is anywhere to be found within miles of the Obama cabinet thus far. WTF?

Sit back and enjoy the fun. And also check out the comments thread below that Nation piece.

One from the time capsule - here’s Lefty-Kim from 2 weeks ago engaging in some scoffing:

Most of this speculation - and the accompanying predictions that Obama may be a steady as she goes moderate - is just that. It’s basically worthless, except for what it reveals about the politics of those doing the predicting. We don’t know exactly how Obama will govern. We do know that he’s stated that big challenges will require bold measures. And we do know that an agenda of de facto universal healthcare, economic revival and redressing the plight of middle and working class voters is what he won on. That’s surprisingly radical in the American context. And this election saw a lot of the anti-government rhetoric Reagan ran into town with finally kicked to the curb.

In denial or prescient? Only time will tell …

Fresh from the talented pen of Joel Watson from HijiNKS Ensue - his efferverscent comics are well worth following. [Republished with permission]

Wonder what Obama thinks of Oz’s rather more fiercesome drop bears?

GrodsCorp do not tolerate fools gladly, especially conservative ones. You could even say they’re unforgiving. They certainly don't forget. They’ve put together a collection of bloggers who called it for McCain, with their way-out predictions laid bare:

The US election came and went, and now it’s time to laugh ourselves stupid at those who predicted an overwhelming win for McCain.
Owned. Every last one.
Goodness! There’s skullduggery afoot!

These dismal failures haven’t stopped the political soothsayers who fancy themselves as futurologists. John Passant of En Passant is a self-styled socialist who is “a liberationist - I believe in Marx’s idea of the self-emancipation of the working class.” His take on the election is couched in terms of old-fashioned class warfare:

I put Barack Obama’s victory down to one thing - class. Working people are scared. Scared for their jobs. Scared for their families. Scared for the future.

US workers have had 16 years of rule for the rich from Clinton and Bush. They’ve had eight years of foreign adventures which are or will be defeats.

The wages of low and middle income earners have not increased in real terms over the past 8 years. The minimum wage has fallen. The reward for all this sacrifice - bailouts for the fat cats on Wall Street and more sacrifices for workers on Main Street.

…Obama will not be able to deliver substantive change because to do so would require a challenge to the very structures of US capitalism.
All change at Obama station?

Homepage Daily brings us a video of a panel discussion - Obama: What Can We Expect?

Australian Broadcasting Corporation journalist Leigh Sales recently chaired a panel at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre: David Brady (Stanford University), Michael Parks (former editor of the Los Angeles Times) and Geoffrey Garrett (US Studies Centre).

From Michael Parks:

Nothing is going to happen in international relations and foreign policy, nothing is going to happen well, without getting the economy right.

From David Bradbury:

Of course he’s going to fail on foreign policy… European and Australian expectations are way too high.

From Geoffrey Garrett:

There is something to be said for the amount of political capital that Obama comes in with… Extraordinary times sometimes generate extraordinary leadership… I wouldn’t rule success out but it would be naïve to underestimate the magnitude of the challenges he is going to inherit.

Parts 1 and 2 of this program are available through Slow TV on The Online Monthly

Talking about morality in international affairs is easy. What about action? Antony Loewenstein examines the tough foreign policy challenges facing the President-elect

An unprecedented amount of hyperbole from the international media heralded last week’s election of Barack Obama to the US presidency. Fortunately, a healthy dose of scepticism was also administered. Take Charlie Booker in The Guardian earlier this week:

“President Barack Obama. President Barack Obama. Nope, still can’t get used to it. It’s literally too good to be true. I must’ve died in my sleep and am now having an insane fantasy pumped into my head by the Matrix. Any minute now Salma Hayek is going to float through the door with a tray of biscuits and I’ll know the game’s up.”

And The Onion joked: “[Obama’s] win causes obsessive supporters to realise how empty their lives are.”

Despite profound inequalities that won’t disappear overnight, Obama undoubtedly represents a monumental achievement for race politics in America. As the hype dies down, however, the real task of assessing the political ambitions of the President-elect emerges.

His foreign affairs plans have been met with concern by analysts and activists who spend time on the ground in nations under American bombs and who don’t inhabit think-tanks in Washington and New York.

In the first instance, Obama’s decision to appoint Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff — a radical Zionist whose father was in the fascist Irgun in the 1940s in an attempt to form a Jewish state — indicates that he is not as progressive as some may hope. The editor of The Nation rightly urges caution.

Many on the global left have welcomed Obama as a rejection of the disastrous Bush Administration, but its difficult to know what he will deliver. The Los Angeles Times predicted last week that many of Obama’s foreign policy picks would come from academia:

“The good news is that Barack Obama’s intellectuals are fine scholars who have produced some thought-provoking books and articles on the best way to deploy American power. The bad news is that Walt Rostow and Paul Wolfowitz were also fine scholars who had produced interesting books and articles on the best way to deploy American power.”

Beware the “humanitarian hawk”, a concept that is proudly extolled by those on the left who love to use the American military to pursue a “moral” foreign policy. Many of these figures embraced the Bush Administration’s policies in Afghanistan and Iraq. Tony Judt has written eloquently in the London Review of Books of the acquiescence of liberals to “President Bush’s catastrophic foreign policy”.

Lest we forget too the infamous 1997 speech by late British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook in which he announced an “ethical foreign policy”. During his tenure, as Medialens reminds us, he “supplied Hawk fighter-bombers to the Suharto regime committing genocide in East Timor. He propagandised on behalf of US-UK sanctions that killed one million Iraqi civilians. He defended the cynical December 1998 bombing of Iraq and spread government lies about Iraq’s alleged failure to cooperate with inspectors.”

Talking about morality in international affairs is easy; putting it into action is far more difficult. Besides, many of the advisers congregating around Obama are former Bill Clinton hacks who pursued similar policies to Robin Cook.

Obama will face immediate foreign policy challenges in Israel/Palestine. The Jewish state may soon elect a man, Benjamin Netanyahu, who opposes any cessation of settlement building. Unless America decides to pressure Israel in an unprecedented way — such as cutting aid unless certain conditions are met — the occupation will only deepen. Jerusalem’s mayoral race symbolises the racial fault-lines that are worsening by the day.

One Israeli commentator has already asked Obama to ignore his country, as “Clinton, our ‘friend,’ promoted Oslo, which cost us 1500 murder victims, and Bush brought Hamas to Gaza”. Clearly colony expansion on Palestinian land, and the impossibility of the two-state “solution”, is preferable to direct talks.

Even the Hamas leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, said again last weekend that his Government was willing to accept a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. Political negotiations with Hamas, as Haaretz encourages, are essential if peace is to be achieved. Will Obama acknowledge the importance of engaging the Islamists? This is unlikely in the short term.

But perhaps Obama has already inspired the Rudd Government in subtle ways. The minor, but important, shift in Australia’s position towards Israel at the UN should be celebrated but has already been condemned by the Zionist establishment. Does the Jewish community want the mainstream population to believe that condemnation of settlement building is against Israel’s best interests?

Leading Palestinian thinker Ali Abunimah — who recently visited Australia — urges clear-eyed thinking on the President-elect:

“What does it say that the sort of things he [Obama] was prepared to do just a few years ago he is no longer prepared to do, that he didn’t visit a single Muslim community centre or mosque or associate publicly with Arab Americans during the campaign? And it’s not as if, the day after the campaign, he started to send more conciliatory signals. On the contrary, there could not be a more provocative appointment than Rahm Emanuel, if he wanted to send a signal that he is going to stick by a quite hard-line pro-Israel policy.”

While the reality checks are vital, there is no doubt that great portions of the world have welcomed Obama as a breath of fresh air. The Arab blogosphere shouted loudly about the history-making event. An American friend living in Cairo blogged the following:

“A new day dawned in Cairo today. As it does every day. And it started as it always does: with birds, schoolchildren, and car horns. No national holiday here. I’m looking forward to going out in the streets to hear the reaction. The best reaction I’ve heard so far: ‘Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job.’ Bah humbug. I confess I’m moved.”

Blogger ‘Neurotic Iraqi Wife’, who lives in a country destroyed by the American war machine, wrote:

“For me, this is not just about history, this is about someone who was able to bring down the very people that broke my country. It’s a great punch to the very people that destroyed the individual Iraqi. And that to me is enough victory. I will only have to say to Mr Obama, don’t let us down.”

Harry Clarke’s ‘commentary on economics, politics & other things’ discovered an Obama policy that is already under challenge. He seemed attracted to the idea of community service though his source didn’t:

Gregory Mankiw points out that Barack Obama supports the conscription of youth into community service. I wonder how many aged lefties will now dump on Obama on the basis of past Vietnam Moratorium ideals. Well of course its not this aged lot who now face the prospect of being conscripted so that a certain amount of soundly-justified hypocrisy is plausible.

Maybe spending the last week in China has dented my democratic ideals but I think the Obama suggestion makes a lot of sense.
Obama supports conscription

Nicholas Gruen, CEO of Lateral Economics  who posts at Club Troppo focused on the one big thing which Obama has done since Tuesday:

Paul Krugman was always critical of Obama for not being more partisan. We’ll see what happens. In my ignorance I’m expecting Obama to be like Clinton - a pro when it comes to policy who hires the best advice he can get unlike Republicans who haven’t done that since - well perhaps someone can remind me. But I don’t expect him to be particularly bold. But who knows. The thing that always struck me as ridiculous about Krugman’s critique is that being all post-partisan was a good way to build a coalatition and get into power. You find out how people are going to govern after they get into power - or hasn’t Krugman noticed. FDR was elected on a platform of balancing the budget.

And now we get to see how Obama governs. And his first decision is to go for a hard man as a chief of staff - Obama plays the good cop and everyone is telling us that Rahm Emanuel gets to play the bad cop. I’ll be interested to see if Krugman has anything to say on this - I’ve not seen it yet. But it’s a first sign that Obama is under no illusions about how lovely the Republicans will be towards him.
Rahm Emanuel - the enforcer

Another economist, John Quiggin, whose blog presents itself as a ‘Commentary on Australian & world events from a social-democratic perspective’ looked forward to:

a revival of the progressive politics of the New Deal, in retreat ever since the 1970s. If Obama can combine an economic recovery with a new commitment to social equity, his election victory could prove more significant than any since that of Roosevelt in 1932.

He mentioned several policy areas, one of which is global warming:

… looming over all of this is climate change. Obama has promised a cap-and-trade scheme, and a return to world leadership at Copenhagen. But, as in Australia, there will be powerful voices calling for a continuation of the Bush policy of delay and denial, and putting the financial crisis forward as a pretext. Neither the world nor the position of the US as a world leader can afford this.
A tough road ahead

I feel a ‘three economists in a boat’ joke coming on. So let’s give Tigtog at Hoyden About Town the punch line. She speculated about what Obama’s priorities should be:

Just like a gazillion others, I’ve been thinking about what Obama could/should do, in his first 100 days in office, that would be small in terms of the effort required (falling within executive powers entirely, no Congressional courting/approval required) but that would make an immediate, huge, difference to many people.

I ended up deciding that there were so many things that needed fixing, that I would be better off focussing on what I would be horrendously disappointed to find that he was not going to do. So here’s my One Thing that I will be broken-hearted if he does not do it:

1. negate the Global Gag Rule (aka Mexico City Policy)

Our continuing research shows the gag rule is eroding family planning and reproductive health services in developing countries. There is no evidence that it has reduced the incidence of abortion globally. On the contrary, it impedes the very services that help women avoid unwanted pregnancy from the start.

What's your One Thing?

Just one thing

According to the blog, a hoyden (hoid’n) is a woman of saucy, boisterous or carefree behavior. A match for 3 economists anyday.

Man of Lettuce, Sydney taxi driver and author of Cablog, joined work and pleasure as usual on election night:

Last night the City was awash with the intoxicating ambience of Barack Obama’s victory. An earlier invitation to the Democrats Abroad celebration party on Oxford Street had alerted me to a premier content source…sheer exhilaration plus alcohol - perfect.

His account of an encounter in his cab with an African American couple should be read in full on his unique blog. He finishes on his own note of hope:

…Let’s pray he can fulfil this vision and unify all Americans, thereby becoming one of their great Presidents.

O-ba-ma

An Onymous Lefty, Jeremy, raised a sour note. Known for his sarcastic posts, he put that aside to express his disgust at the California vote against gay marriage in straightforward language:

…the fact that many of his voters (he won California, after all) turned out to take this basic civil right away from gay people seriously tarnishes his victory. It implies that had he been more principled, and really stood for civil rights - and asked his voters to genuinely consider why, at a moment of the triumph of African Americans as a previously-persecuted group, they would even consider turning that persecution on others - then the gay people of California would not have just lost theirs.

I stand by my earlier refusal to get too excited by the election result.
Obama refuses to stand up for civil rights; Californians lose theirs

Mark Bahnisch at Larvatus Prodeo looked at the impact of the web on the elections and possible future directions:

No doubt one of the big stories about the US election will be the influence of the blogosphere and the netroots. In many ways, the rise of the intertubes in politics was an unintended consequence of the Rove approach to politics…

All technology is shaped socially. Blogging, YouTube, and other social media have been enablers and not just causes of this invigoration of democracy. I’d like to see some research and analysis focused on the wellsprings of activism we’ve seen bubbling up. I think that would be, in many ways, a more productive frame through which to look at what’s interesting, distinctive and exciting about this campaign than yet another round of “journos v. bloggers” style articles.

US election: Yes we can!

Andrew Bolt has been posted on Voices without Votes before. He is a daily newspaper columnist with Melbourne’s Herald Sun and media spokesperson for the right wing in Australia. He is a climate change denier, a critic of anything progressive (the dreaded left-wing, latte and chardonnay drinking socialists) and has “issues” with race.

Just before conceding Obama’s win yesterday, his blog featured a video clip outside a polling booth with the following comments:

Should McCain win, against all predictions and the polls, there will be trouble:

Toledo police are gearing up for possible “civil unrest” during and after tomorrow’s elections.

Indeed, the menace outside one polling booth, patrolled by Black Panthers, is palpable

Obama or McCain. UPDATE: It’s Obama

The old politics of fear and prejudice still live with us. Judge for yourself.

Finally, Miriam Lyons, from the Centre for Policy Development, also shared her thoughts on the Obama presidency at Larvatus Prodeo:

Today’s election result heralds the rise of Green Keynesianism. The US economy is in the toilet and smart economists are advocating direct investment over a more consumer-based fiscal stimulus.

The Obama campaign’s target for emissions cuts was 80% by 2050 - a fair way ahead of Oz Labor’s as-yet-unaltered election promise of 60% by 2050. With the Arctic ice-sheet melting rapidly even an 80% target is too low for a developed country like the US, but it should certainly give Professor Ross Garnaut reason to revise his pessimism about the likely outcome of the Copenhagen round of climate negotiations. It’s worth noting that the Obama campaign’s climate and energy platform specifically called for 100% auctioning of permits.

This is serious stuff. Miriam also reflected on possible impacts on Australia by Obama’s approach to war, economics and international relations. As a think-tank person herself, it was no surprise that she concluded with their likely role in the Obama era:

Just as an aside, it will be interesting to follow the relationship between progressive think tanks & the new administration. Expect to see the traditional influx from conservative think tanks to Republican administrations mirrored on the Democrat side this time around.

Guest Post by Miriam Lyons: What does an Obama win mean for Australia?

If George W. Bush represents the Dark Ages in terms of intellectual progress and political awareness, Barack Obama seems squarely planted in the Enlightenment.

Despite the resort to the Bush-Rove smears by the McCain team, and the appeal to the “authoritarian personality” as described by John Dean, it is encouraging to witness Republicans on the street, perhaps not fully articulate, but excessively emotional. One person said if equanmity and a smile that were Obama to be elected he would be her president. One supporter at a McCain rally contented himself by yelling out “socialist” as some emotional code with no reference meaning. Any concept of social democracy is we are to suppose lost on Americans.  Joe the Plumber, and the cast of working class job descriptions, excluding Jesus the Carpenter, gave evidence of an exotic vocabulary.  It was he said “surreal” to be mentioned in the final debate, and something like Obama  views were contrary to the “ideology of democracy”.  Sarah Palin performed her parrot role with distinction - which qualifies her for a role in Monty Python, not President of the United States. She is now set to be America’s very own Pauline Hanson.

Obama will have won without joining McCain in the political sewer, and credit to him for that. In retrospect, I suspect that his 30 minute political ad that amongst other issues highlighted health care, especially for those uncovered, will be seen as the political master stroke. It is salutary to observe, how in The Guardian video, people who cannot afford health insurance can so blithely support the Republicans. Marx, of course, had already observed such “false consciousness”. And Karl got a run as well in this election, but that was the race where ignorance won by country mile.

Reflection and self examination do not seem to have any value in the greatest nation on earth. John S McCain, in the final moments of his campaign, echoed Hilary Clinton, that he too was a fighter - not merely a bomber pilot leaving a trail of wreckage. He was, he declared, coming back (from where?), and he could tell from his long experience of campaigns that he was going to win. Tell that to the marines. Go tell it on the mountain.

To his critics, omega man, Barack Obama, is “less than a perfect man”. Alexander Cockburn, fails to be impressed by the promise of a “transformational leader”.  He observes:

“Obama invokes change. Yet never has the dead hand of the past had a “reform” candidate so firmly by the windpipe.

“Is it possible to confront America’s problems without talking about the arms budget, now entirely out of control? The Pentagon is spending more than at any point since the end of World War II. In “real dollars” – admittedly an optimistic concept these days — the $635 billion appropriated in fiscal 2007 is 5 percent above the previous all-time high, reached in 1952. Depending on how you count them, the Empire has somewhere between 700 and 1,000 overseas bases.

. . . “If elected he will be prisoner of his promise that on his watch Afghanistan will not be lost, nor the white man’s burden shirked.

“In the event of Obama’s victory, the most immediate consequence overseas will most likely be brusque imperial reassertion.

“As a political organizer of his own advancement, Obama is a wonder. But I have yet to identify a single uplifting intention to which he has remained constant if it has presented the slightest risk to his advancement. Summoning all the optimism at my disposal, I suppose we could say he has not yet had occasion to offend two important constituencies and adjust his relatively decent stances on immigration and labor-law reform. Public funding of his campaign? A commitment made becomes a commitment betrayed, just as on warrantless eavesdropping. His campaign treasury is now a vast hogswallow that, if it had been amassed by a Republican, would be the topic of thunderous liberal complaint.

“In substantive terms Obama’s run has been the negation of almost every decent progressive principle, a negation achieved with scarcely a bleat of protest from the progressives seeking to hold him to account. The Michael Moores stay silent. Abroad, Obama stands for imperial renaissance. He has groveled before the Israel lobby and pandered to the sourest reflexes of the cold war era. At home he has crooked the knee to bankers and Wall Street, to the oil companies, the coal companies, the nuclear lobby, the big agricultural combines. He is even more popular with Pentagon contractors than McCain, and has been the most popular of the candidates with K Street lobbyists. He has been fearless in offending progressives, constant in appeasing the powerful.”

Others do not share such a bleak, if accurate, view. For example, David Kaiser observed:

The other night, in a remarkable interview, Rachel Maddow asked Obama if he had any second thoughts about becoming President at this moment in history, with so much going wrong, and he turned the question on its head. No, he replied, this was the kind of moment of which people in public service should dream: the kind of era in which they could make a real contribution. Asked at one point to describe the difference between Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, both of whom he had known, the British philosopher Sir Isiah Berlin said that FDR radiated more than anything else a great joy in his life and work, and JFK, a sense that every morning offered a chance to do great things. Obama, it seems to me, is closer to JFK in that regard, but he has something of the FDR touch as well. He has established his lead with a mixture of inspiration, organization, and steadiness of nerves. I feel rather astonished that the United States has managed not only to produce such a man at this moment in history, but to bring him to the threshold of the White House.

I tend to believe that the interests of the working class will be better served by an Obama presidency, despite the campaigns constant appeal to the middle class. There is a moment in the video at The Guardian, where people from a African American housing estate are been given a lift to vote, often it seems for the first time, which applies to people in their fifties, when the young woman observes, “actually we are not middle class”.

And yet Obama has changed campaigning, in part reflecting the role of the internet, not least you tube, but particularly by the “ground campaign”, which has been running for as long as the campaign. I suspect that you cannot win the office, without been beholden to the supporters and the donors, which have come as always from the big end of town, but also from wallets of the small donors. I suspect that this local participation model not only gives candidate Obama with reach, but as president with a political activist base. We will have to see how that plays. Ashley Sanders, for one, is not so easily convinced.

The election coverage for most people, I suppose, is that provided by television. “Fake” News continued their diet to the afflicted, who can thank ex-pat Rupert Murdoch for their infortainment. Obermann, Stewart and “Colbare”, some of whom were comedians, gave the no-holds coverage. Established funny man, Letterman was jilted by contender McCain, who latter explained he screwed up, he got the wrong mail, or rather he got the “dear John” letter early in the season, and was not required in Washington as he thought. Rachel Maddow emerged as a liberal lighthouse, a success that was a surprise, but could not be argued with.

Others will be better able to describe these changes, even developments. The talking heads continued ad nauseum, so much for the 24/7 news cycle.

The internet in the form of news blogs, for example Talking Points Memo (Josh Marshall), The Huffington Post, Truthdig and others, provided coverage in direct competition to the mainstream media. The New York Times, which I think performed well in the Democratic Primaries, was challenged in quality by these new voices.

The internet provides an audience of intrusive people from distant countries holding the peculiar notion that they too have a stake in this election, and now have a voice, if not a vote. To my knowledge, The Guardian provided the best election coverage. People with British accents could be seen at polling places interviewing, while been told in Florida to keep away, only to respond that behavior would be fully acceptable where they came from.

On a personal level, I would listen to the radio news programs, only to hear reports of events, that I had already read, seen or heard about already.

So it goes. And now, with twenty four hours the final polling will begin. Now for the queues, the voting problems, the voter suppression, and all the hallmarks of the greatest democracy on Earth.

 John McCain’s campaign has focused much of its energy on Pennsylvania, despite remaining well short of winning the state in most polls. At first glance, the state appears to be a tough ask, which it is, but McCain’s Pennsylvania strategy reflects his overall difficult position on the electoral map.

Pollster.com rates states that “lean Republican”, “lean Democrat” and “toss-up” adding up to a total of 156 electoral votes, more than a quarter of the total EVs. However, when you look at the map, every single one of those states voted for George W. Bush in 2004. In addition to the 252 EVs won by John Kerry in 2004, the 7 EVs of Iowa are also classed as “safe Democrat”.

Assuming that the race is limited to current toss-up and leaning states, John McCain needs to contain his losses to 9 EVs out of 156. That means over 90% of close EVs need to fall into John McCain’s lap. In contrast, Barack Obama only needs to win eleven of 156 votes. So while McCain could still theoretically win using the same states as Bush in 2004, he would need to be lucky in a wide variety of states. Assuming Iowa is lost, McCain could lose one of Mississippi, New Mexico or Nevada, or all three of the marginal Plains States. But if any of the larger marginal states, including Missouri, North Carolina, Virginia, Indiana, Arizona, Colorado, or the bigger states of Ohio or Florida. Any one of these would be sufficient to knock out McCain’s chances.

Considering that McCain is currently behind in six different states, each of which would be solely sufficient to defeat him, McCain’s only alternative is expand the field. Hence Pennsylvania. Four Gore/Kerry states carry over 20 EVs. California’s 55 EVs are well out of reach, as is New York’s 31 EVs. Barack Obama has locked in Illinois’ 21 EVs. Considering Pennsylvania’s relatively marginal status, and Obama’s poor performance in the Pennsylvania primary, clearly the McCain campaign has decided that Pennsylvania is the best prospect for expanding the field. If Pennsylvania was to become competitive, then McCain would only need to win 147 out of 177, allowing him to concede losses in Virginia and other small states.

There’s only two problems with this strategy:

• One Blue state isn’t enough to stem the tide of losses in Red states. If Virginia and either Florida or Ohio falls, then Pennsylvania won’t be enough, before counting other losses in the Mountain West and the South.
• Pennsylvania still hasn’t shifted. Pollster.com still has Obama leading by 10% in Pennsylvania.

But I guess when you’re in as weak a position as John McCain is, the Pennsylvania strategy is the best you can find.

Ibrahim Hussein is a Jordanian with Palestinian roots who lives in Dubai in United Arab Emirates.

In his Bottom Line on the U.S. election, he questions its fairness:

We in the Middle East can’t vote, and the majority do not believe that the election is clean, seriously we all are set in thinking the US Elections is rigged, just like 2000. We do not believe that it is fair, especially that there is no equal coverage to other parties other than Democratic party and the Republican part. Most of us do not give a crap and most of us think it is just BS. But I am sure that most of people in the middle east, Arabs, Asians, Europeans, South American, Muslim and Christians will watch.

After struggling with cynicism, he finally looks for hope and change without supporting either candidate:

Some have watched the American elections since last year as if they are watching a reality TV show, a bit longer than American Idol I guess, and some watched it seriously following each and every article written about it. Some believe that it effects all of the world and some believe it will only affect Americans. I believe the whole world have hated the past 8 years, they hated Bush’s foreign policy and domestic policy, in the end all will watch and will wait to know who is the next president for USA hoping change come to Washington and we start seeing some difference in the way things work. Some might laugh and call it naivete, and some will call it hope.   Ibrahamo’s Weblog

Closer to home, William Bowe is one of Australia’s leading psephologists. With five days to go he’s called it:

I expect Obama to win the previously red states of Iowa, New Mexico, Colorado, Virginia, Ohio, Nevada and Florida, leaving him well clear of the “magic 270″ with 338 electoral votes. He is also in contention in Missouri, Indiana and North Carolina, although most pundits rate McCain the favourite here.I'm going out on a limb to predict (without confidence) that the well-oiled Democratic mobilisation campaign will bring these states home as well, pushing Obama up to 375 against 163 for McCain.  Pollbludger predicts: Obama 375, McCain 163

Big call for a West Australian but I’ll back his judgement. This quote is from Crikey’s online website. William also blogs for them as Poll Bludger.  His live blogging will be very popular here next week. Let’s hope we get  a faster result than 2000.

My third favourite is not really a blog, though the video link can be found at mine, Labor View from Bayside. The BBC’s Dan Collyns reports from Peru that Barack Obama has the support of most of the local shamen:

As the US presidential election nears, the shamans of Peru have been displaying their own methods for ensuring the success of their chosen candidate. Peru's shamen send US election vibes

An easy response is to focus on the American executive/legislative divide, but that carries no water for me.  Americans seem to also pick their federal representatives and senators in the same way as they do their president.

The best that I can come up with is to look at differences in political engagement brought about by differences in scale and political integration.  The USA is much bigger (by population) and much less centralised than Australia or Britain.  As a result, the average US citizen is more removed from Washington D.C. than the average Briton is from Whitehall or the average Australian from Canberra.  The greater population hurts engagement by making the individual that much less significant on the national stage - a scaled-up equivalent of Dunbar’s number, if you will.  The decentralisation (greater federalism) serves to focus attention more on the lower levels of government.  The two effects, I believe, reinforce each other.

Americans are great lovers of democracy at levels that we in Australia and Britain might consider ludicrously minuscule and at that level there is real fire in the debates over specific policies.  Individual counties vote on whether to raise local sales tax by 1% in order to increase funding to local public schools.  Elections to school boards decide what gets taught in those schools.

That decentralisation is a deliberate feature of the US political system, explicitly enshrined in the tenth amendment to their constitution.  But when so many matters of policy are decided at the county or state level, all that is left at the federal level are matters of foreign policy and national identity.  It seems no surprise, then, that Americans see the ideal qualities of a president being strength and an ability to “unite the country.”

Although Sarah Palin’s star is no longer in the ascendancy, I decided to feature three Australian bloggers’ latest posts which touch on the aspiring Vice President. The fascination with her has continued unabated in the U.S. but many bloggers over here are having trouble taking her seriously. It's much easy to laugh or dismiss her as inept. My blog has been besieged by Americans looking for the send-up website palinaspresident.com.

However, the first blogger brings a whole new dimension to  Palin's impact on feminist politics. Thinking about Andrea Dworkin’s book Right Wing Women has brought a guest post about Palin at Hoyden about Town:

It’s very easy to identify her anti-woman policies, and it’s very easy to see the way that she’s put on a pedestal for these things. A nice shiny pedestal in a glass case where no one can really talk to her. It’s easy to see the many of the ways that, in spite of this pedestal (or perhaps because of it) sexism is used as a weapon against Palin—she’s reduced to a pretty face, a fuckbot, a caribou Barbie—play the game, make the deal, and we’ll let you stay on your pedestal (at least for now).

At a level far removed from the oft repeated political clichés, Palin challenges her feminism in unexpected ways, and her self image.

I laugh at her, because I’m scared of the deal she’s made with the patriarchal world she lives in. I’m more vociferous in my laughter, because I know that, every day, I make deals too, and Sarah Palin reminds me of this and makes me uncomfortable.

Palin, to me, represents a part of myself that I’m afraid of, a part of myself that I don’t like admitting exists. She represents what I might have been, had I grown up in a conservative family, and she represents the person that I am anyway, every time I smile when I’d prefer to frown, every time I giggle when what I really mean is, “Get the fuck away from me,” and every time I close my mouth when I have the right—and sometimes the obligation—to speak out.

Feminism Friday: Right Wing Women, Sarah Palin, and Me

This is a far cry from the jokes about Palin’s clothes bill or her pit-bull persona.

On a totally different tack, Kim speculates about Palin’s future if the Republican ticket loses:

But, while the possibility that the Republicans could win can’t absolutely be excluded, it certainly is worthwhile posing the question of what happens if they do in fact lose.

Jonathan Freedland is one who has been thinking about where the GOP goes under an Obama presidency, and he makes quite an interesting case that Sarah Palin could position herself as a potential 2012 frontrunner. This is interesting for at least two reasons. First, Palin’s selection - among all the other obvious reasons - was a reflection of the failure of the “conservative movement” to produce a convincing Presidential candidate in the first place. One of the real stories of the swing away from the Republicans is the exhaustion and fracturing of many of the activist factions that were on a roll from the late 90s until just a few years ago. Secondly, it might explain some of the stories about friction between McCain himself and Palin over her tactics in this race recently.

Palin forever?

The idea of Sarah Palin as a continuing political phenomenon is a frightening one for many of us.

Duckpond has used Biden’s test for presidency to look at the candidates’ fitness for office.

Joe Biden created a stir by suggesting that the newly elected president would face an international test within six months of his election.

I am not sure about the Cuban Missile Crisis analogy, but in essence he is right, and the likely challenges are good measures to assess the candidates for president and vice president.

It is a thoughtful piece but dismisses Palin, seeing her as a creation of the media rather than a real contender.

Colin Powell has dealt with the question of Sarah Palin’s unfitness for the office of president, so we can forget her. We have this luxury because we are not crazy television stations hawking for advertising revenue.

TESTING THE PRESIDENT

I wonder if that will be history’s judgment.

Vacuous coverage of the US election has only skimmed the surface of the economic and foreign policy challenges facing the next President, argues Antony Loewenstein

Mainstream media debate over the forthcoming US election has been fixated on the trivial rather than the substantive. Foreign affairs issues have barely been discussed — not least the Iraqi rejection of a security agreement between Washington and Baghdad — and leading reporters still cling to the belief that the Republican candidate John McCain is an essentially decent man who has been forced to run a negative campaign against a resurgent Barack Obama.

The economic crisis has been portrayed as a problem to be managed rather than prompting a wholesale questioning of the system that produced the mess. The magazine Dollars and Sense examines what has been ignored by much of the media and finds the current and former captains of America’s finance system following the personal finance maxim “Pay yourself first”:

“The top execs at Morgan Stanley have, in fact, received $10.7 billion in compensation for the year to date, an amount greater than the current net worth of the company. The CEOs defended their action, noting that it is generally considered rude to tip waiters less than 10 per cent, even when the service is bad.”

Despite a distinct lack of media curiosity, Noam Chomsky argues that evidence that the Western capitalist system was on the brink of profound trauma has been ample and available for years:

“The basis for the crisis is predictable and it was in fact predicted. It is built into financial liberalisation that there will be frequent and deep crises. In fact, since financial liberalisation was instituted about 35 years ago, there has been a trend of increasing regularity of crises and deeper crises, and the reasons are intrinsic and understood…

“You couldn’t predict the exact moment at which there would be a severe crisis, and you couldn’t predict the exact scale of the crisis, but that one would come was obvious. In fact, there have been serious and repeated crises during this period of increasing deregulation. It is just that they hadn’t yet hit so hard at the centre of wealth and power before, but have instead hit mostly the third world.”

Such insight has been largely absent from our press — and mere greed is a far too easy explanation for the chaos. Instead, we are treated to endless — admittedly amusing but utterly irrelevant — stories about Sarah Palin being mocked on Saturday Night Live. Politics as a two-team sport has never been more vacuous, and this at a time when most Americans are struggling to make ends meet.

Mark Danner, writing in the New York Review of Books, argues that the “radicalism of Barack Obama lies not in his policies but in his face. It is a radicalism not just of colour but of emergence, for scarcely a year ago that face was utterly unknown to the overwhelming majority of Americans. Not since Jimmy Carter in 1976 has a major party put forward as nominee a candidate so little known to the country.”

Danner isn’t incorrect, but what would Obama represent to the world, other than “change”? After a recent presidential debate between McCain and Obama, foreign affairs expert Stephen Zunes rightly chastised the Democratic candidate for failing to challenge the litany of falsehoods spread by the Republicans. How for example, asked Zunes, “should the United States consider the Iraqi government an “ally,” given that the two largest parties in the ruling coalition have historically allied themselves with Iran?”

Or take Israel/Palestine. Some leading Jewish American commentators, such as MJ Rosenberg, argue that the power of the Zionist lobby in Washington is declining, the visibility of Palestinians is increasing and the concept of two states for two peoples is growing in strength. He writes of a recent American conference attended by Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad:

“Perhaps most impressive was that this event was happening at all. A dozen years ago, Palestinians were on the margins of acceptance here in Washington. Few respectable types-let alone US officials-would allow themselves to be seen at a Palestinian event where, of all things, the Palestinian national anthem is sung along with the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’. But this year I saw dozens of prominent officials, including Deputy National Security Council Adviser Elliot Abrams, enjoying themselves among Fatah-supporting Palestinians. Not an image I’ll soon forget!

“Things have changed since Golda Meir preached that there was no such thing as Palestinians. The Palestinians have been ‘mainstreamed’ which means that at long last their voices are being heard in Washington.”

His optimism is badly misplaced and belies the facts on the ground in Palestine itself. Furthermore, to feel pleased with the presence of Abrams, a neo-conservative who actively contributed to the civil war between Fatah and Hamas, is delusional. Rosenberg is simply reflecting the cautious hope that an Obama presidency would bring a renewed chance of peace to the Middle East. If only this were the case.

The Israelis are currently discussing a Saudi peace plan from 2002 that would grant the Jewish state a comprehensive deal with the Arab world if it withdrew to its 1967 borders. Alas, the settlement movement, numbering over 400,000 people, will never allow this to happen and colony expansion has only increased in the last year. Those pushing for the two state solution today are imagining the conflict as they wish it were, rather than how it really is.

Would Obama change the equation? Perhaps marginally. During her visit to Australia last week, leading academic Sara Roy, senior research associate at Harvard University’s Centre for Middle East Studies, said that she and her colleagues believed that a post-Bush environment may bring a semblance of “balance” to the region and a renewed push for open and transparent dialogue between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Although Roy has never met Obama personally, Harvard colleagues talk of a man who greatly impressed the university and displayed a solid moral and ethical outlook. A leading law faculty professor said that Obama was the most impressive student he’d seen during his 30 years of teaching. Furthermore, when Obama finished his degree he received over 600 job offers from across the country, including some of the leading law firms. He turned them all down and worked in Chicago as a community organiser.

While none of this means he would be a good President, it does provide a small window to the kind of America many of us would like to see. Nonetheless, in these weeks before the election, we have to suffer dreary articles by figures such as former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser praying that an Obama presidency would again show America to be a “force for good in the world”. Such pronouncements ignore the reality of American behaviour before September 11. Torture, extraordinary rendition and the overthrow of unfriendly regimes didn’t start with the Bush Administration.

The last eight years have undoubtedly wrought carnage across the world but simply changing President isn’t going to repair the damage. It is the responsibility of journalists to question the assumptions that led the Western world into the morass. From the financial crisis to the war in Iraq, business as usual won’t suffice. Obama will do little more than tinker around the edges.

The American people should demand more.

Madagascan Lova Rakotomalala, one of the VwV authors, has a  brilliant post today on  malagasy dwarf hippo: about that “if the world could vote” and minority head of state. He turns the tables on the rest of the world:

As most surveys have shown so far, if the world could vote, Obama would win over McCain in landslide. As a consequence, my friends and relatives overseas often say that they cannot understand why the US voters have not clearly made their choice yet when the rest of the world is in agreement on which candidate is the better choice.

Well, here is my advice to my friends, relatives and myself wondering about the judgment of the American voters:

let's all get off our collective high horses and ask ourselves whether it would really be a slam dunk if the same situation were to present itself back home. In other words, would a relatively young candidate from a minority group with a new approach fare that well against an experienced politician labeled as a war hero in your own country?

His answer to this challenge:

Now, in the history of presidential elections worldwide, how many times did a younger, ethnic minority candidate win in a landslide ?

I do not have the exact answer but as far as I know, only two countries have had an elected ethnic minority national leader at some point in history: Peru (Fujimori) and Fiji (Chaudhry). India (Singh) and Bolivia (Morales) could be considered but I am not sure if either count as a true elected ethnic minority leader, Singh was not elected and is more part of a religious minority. Morales is part of the indigenous population but technically, indigenous groups are the majority even though they are very rarely in power.

Closer to home, a TV blog in Australia, TVtonight, is bemused by John McCain's decision to snub David Letterman's talk show. Nothing worse than a media star scorned:

It was on David Letterman’s own talk show that John McCain announced to America that he was running as a candidate for the presidency, an unusual platform to declare himself.

But last month the unique bond went a little awry when McCain snubbed Dave for an interview with Katie Couric. Bad idea. Dave’s been milking it for gags ever since.

“Do you suspend your campaign? No, because that makes me think, well, you know, maybe there will be other things down the road - if he’s in the White House, he might just suspend being president. I mean, we’ve got a guy like that now!” he said.

Tonight you can see the “kiss and make up” appearance of the man running for president as he makes his apologetic appearance on The Late Show.

Guy Rundle is on the road in the U.S. covering the campaign for Australian online media service Crikey  where his posts usually read like Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail. His sober assessment on the last debate:

The score - McCain was punchier but more scattered, and he commanded the rhetorical field with his Joe the plumber stuff, before Obama started to get it back onto more general. Obama passed up every opportunity to punch hard which yes in this context seemed wise.

Once again Obama won by not losing. McCain lost by getting a draw even a slight win. And I reckon the ‘life of the mother’ air quotes are good for another tranche of female voters moving to Obama, and that thing about teachers not needing training. He’s hitting wrong notes, I suspect, the old navy flyer fighting the last war/campaign but two or three.

Last presidential debate at Hofstra

I recommend Guy's full posts which are steeped in 1970's journalistic tradition. A true disciple of Hunter S. Thompson.