…was the headline of an post I had in mind to write after reading Maureen Dowd’s column the other day. Luckily Jonathan Raban saved me the trouble:

Those who hear only empty optimism in Obama aren’t listening. His routine stump speech is built on the premise that America has become estranged from its own essential character; a country unhinged from its constitution, feared and disliked across the globe, engaged in a dumb and unjust war, its tax system skewed to help the rich get richer and the poor grow poorer, its economy in ‘shambles’, its politics ‘broken’. ‘Lonely’ is a favourite word, as he conjures a people grown lonely in themselves and lonely as a nation in the larger society of the world. (more…)

Filed under Journalism + Politics on March 22, 2008
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James Carville, a Clinton advisor, quoted in today’s New York Times:

Mr. Richardson’s endorsement [of Barack Obama] came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic.

…is, they’ve been telling us since March 4, how the race for the Democratic nomination was going to end. And sure enough, the whimpering has begun in earnest. How do we know? Ben Smith at Politico is going on vacation.

If that doesn’t convince you, consider how quickly Adam Nagourney’s article in yesterday’s New York Times has become the cornerstone of the new conventional wisdom about the race. (more…)

(Hollywood, California)

After reading this, it seems clear to me that the question now is no longer whether Barack Obama deserves to be president of the United States, but whether the United States deserves Barack Obama as its president. The speech is one for the history books.

Some highlights after the jump:
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Zhang Qingli, Communist Party secretary of the Tibet Autonomous Region:

The Central Party Committee is the real Buddha for Tibetans.

(Source: New York Times)