Here the McCain campaign is screaming “show the footage…show the footage” and they are just asking for the presentation of the publicly broadcast footage of his appearance with Khalidi days before the election. That footage wasn’t “embargoed” – and there must be a lot of people with archived copies of it out there somewhere. If “^0 Minutes” doesn’t show it, someone else surely will.

This is just one more idiotic move by a campaign that couldn’t do anything right.

I fully agree that Joe Klein has been doing heroic work in this area – note this post from last summer on some of his hitbacks against the neocons.

http://www.tvweek.com/news/200…..s_dont.php

I made no elision. My comments were simply not necessary, as Jane, Scott Horton and Glennzilla had already made clear that the attack against Khalidi was “anti-Arab” — the currently most reviled “other” or “foreign” element in American politics, along with variations on “Muslim” and “Islam”. It was also an expression of the Jewish neocon campaign to keep criticism of Israel the state within excessively and harmfully narrow bounds, much narrower than that engaged in by Israeli nationals or their many friends. Glennzilla, especially, has written several articles on the latter.

An irony apparently lost on Goldfarb and others is that they are applying an offshoot of a sociology about demonizing “the other”, one of whose prime intellectual sources was an earlier Columbia University Arabist and sociologist.

personally, i want him to go with option #1. and one way to make that more palatable to obama is for us to be the crazy leftists. that would give him more political space to do what needs to be done. would he take it? i don’t know, but i think we have to give him the chance.

I think it will take longer to sort out and administer the changes in housing – for individuals, communities, the “market”, and its lenders. It will take that long for workers fired at a merged GM/Chrysler to find new jobs, at lower wages. Long term changes in other industries, health insurers and financial services among them, may take that long to become apparent, much less be reckoned with.

Fortunately, I think that blogs can help “out” the hypocrisy of purveyors of hate and division as tools to acquire electoral advantage. For many, though, knowledge is not insight or an opportunity to change; it is just sharper, more protracted pain. I think Obama knows that in his bones, and it’s one reason he is so cautious and calm.

That that will retard achieving progressives’ goals would be an acceptable price if it keeps the peace. But we shouldn’t take the equation for granted. Rather, we should follow FDR’s command to his progressive followers, “I agree with you. Now make me do it.”

This should serve as a reminder to everyone (if our presence in Iraq weren’t already) of how successful neoconservatives have been defining the terms of the debate.