Harry’s Place

Yes, I know it’s wrong to read too much into this, but still…
Who would you rather have as President? A guy who routinely risks thousands of dollars on the throw of a pair of dice? Or a cautious but winning poker player?
I like this story from Barack Obama’s days as a state senator in Springfield, […]

As a former longtime resident of St. Louis, Missouri, it pains me to read about a bunch of neo-Nazis turning out to protest a Jewish film festival there.
Lois Horwitz said she saw the demonstrators as she left the film festival, driving toward Lindbergh from Plaza Frontenac’s parking garage.
Horwitz said her first thought was that the […]

From Paul Farhi’s tribute to the comedian George Carlin, who died Sunday at age 71:
As much as Orwell, Carlin saw in language the power not just to obscure, but also to twist and pervert. He noted the evolution of military terminology — from “shell shock” to “battle fatigue” to “post-traumatic stress disorder” — with its […]

The Southern Poverty Law Center– which does an excellent job of monitoring such things– reports on the bizarre convergence between leftwing Vermonters pushing for secession from the United States “empire” and white-supremacist neo-Confederate southerners with similar ideas.
One of the leading figures figures in this convergence is Kirkpatrick Sale, a contributing editor to The Nation magazine […]

One of a series of occasional posts recording hard-Left, anti-Zionist and “anti-imperialist” outrage, shock and profound disappointment at Barack Obama’s foreign policy pronouncements:
Joshua Frank, Why I Can’t Support Barack Obama, at Counterpunch:
Like the majority of his colleagues, Obama has done very little to change the face of American politics. He has voted for war spending, […]

Democrats: who did you want to win the nomination?
Certainly, Hilary was far from flawless. Dynastic politics has an unhealthy whiff to it. But I had no doubt that she’d prove a capable and shrewd President. By contrast, there’s a rather appealing fairytale quality to the rise of Obama. Yet, as the campaign progressed, the Wright […]

I’m wondering if our European readers think this article by Andrei Markovits at Jeff Weintraub’s blog is a fair take on the reaction on their side of the Atlantic to Barack Obama’s presidential nomination.
Ever since Obama clinched the Democratic nomination for President, the overwhelming response from the European media and from cultural and political elites […]

Despite having actual memories of 1968– one or two of them even fond– I’m going to pass on this celebration of that year’s utter grooviness.
Co-authors of Beyond the Fragments, Sheila Rowbotham, Lynne Segal and Hilary Wainwright are reunited at the ‘Long Hot Summer Night of 1968 Inspiration’ party to revisit the birth of a revived […]

Obama? McCain? It hardly matters. They are both in thrall to their corporate and military masters, as was Robert Kennedy 40 years ago.
In other words, Pilger has not a single surprising or interesting thing to say.
I suspect a thorough review of the piece would reveal other factual inaccuracies, but here’s one I noticed: Pilger asserts […]

If, as Toni Morrison claimed, Bill Clinton was our first black President, is it fair to say that Barack Obama (assuming he wins the November election and all) will be our first Jewish President?
There was this from Jeffrey Goldberg’s interview with Obama last month:
JG: You’ve talked about the role of Jews in the development of […]