President Obama. God that sounds weird. I certainly never thought I'd hear the like in my day. I had written that I was deeply worried about Obama's chances of winning against a half-sane white Republican in a general election. Luckily, the Republicans didn't nominate one. They nominated John McCain. He's...

What can one say? John McCain has chosen the Far North's Betty Boop as his running mate. A 72 year-old cancer survivor who has refused any but the most perfunctory look at his health records has chosen as the leader of the free world should he succumb in his first...

Before: Oh God. An hour and a half of this. I'd rather claw my own eyes out with spork. I know who I'm voting for. If John McCain saved six black babies from drowning tomorrow, I wouldn't vote for him. I'm already pissed. PBS's Ray Suarez just said that McCain...

Andrew Sullivan, squawking the name "Milton Friedman" as if it magically disappeared the ridiculous, sat on Bill Maher's show blaming the financial crisis on American consumers who bought houses they couldn't afford. He was arguing against Naomi Klein's thesis that the crisis belonged squarely at the doorstep of an ideology-obsessed...

Why isn't the Obama camp attacking Republicans for crying "sexism" left and right? Why isn't every Dem surrogate out there mocking Palin and her defenders with the same condescension with which Republicans and Obama surrogates mocked Hillary Clinton for suggesting that her gender was held against her?

On the...

Fifty percent of this year's Republican playbook is typically divisive Rove Culture Wars. The other fifty percent is all about racial signs and symbols. Georgia GOP Congressan Lynn Westmoreland finally came right out and called Obama "uppity," kindly leaving the inevitable to our imaginations.

The Republicans have not changed. They...

At some point, Barack Obama had to decide if he wanted to be President, or a prophet; if he wanted to lead a government, or a Movement. In the primary, the whole "Movement" schtick worked. He was the insurgent, he had an front-running opponent he could vilify, and the issue...

Three years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita battered the homes of hundreds thousands of Louisianans, too many residents are still unable to afford to rebuild their homes or find an affordable place to rent, according to a new housing report by the national research and advocacy group PolicyLink.

After a couple of slave rebellions in the early 19th century, American Christianity shifted irrevocably from a catalyst for slave liberation, to an additional shackle securing black men in bondage to white ones. After the Vesey and Prosser rebellions, whites largely oversaw slave worship to ensure that blacks were...

My father was a career military officer, so pardon me if I don't genuflect at self-important, self-serving mentions of our "brave men and women in uniform," too often invoked by those who never served, or never knew anyone who did, or who fought like hell and worked every angle not...

At some point or another, every political campaign digs itself a hole, trips over its own feet and falls face-first into it.

In hyping its 'learn who the VP is via text message' stunt, the Obama camp has done just that.

"No other campaign has done this before. You...

Dearest Diary,

Just had a chat with Cheney. God he's freaky. He said he was pushing me to McCain's folks for VP. Somehow he made it sound... scary, like he'd pack me off to Gitmo if I didn't get picked. "It's yours to lose," he said, glowering. Something's wrong...

Everybody considers Obama through the self-reflective prism of his blackness while pretending to ignore the fact that Obama is black. White Democratic primary voters made all manner of unsupported assumptions about Obama based largely on his skin. There was absolutely no indication that he was a progressive true believer.

I guess the Uppity One on a World Tour was just too much for their lily-white hearts. There are, after all, rules. In the Willa Cather world the Washington press corps inhabit, decorum is life. Birth and breeding will out. George Bush has the sense and sensibility of a trailer...

Ramesh Ponnuru, author of the hilariously titled The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts and the Disregard for Human Life, has purged once more on the pages of the Washington Post. His target: Michelle Obama. In justifying the right wing attacks on her, he writes, "Her combination...

The personable, shirt-sleeved, loose-limbed fellow has morphed into the dark-suited, flag-lapel pinned polibot. In style and emphasis, Barack Obama has shifted to a less colorful (no pun intended) version of the woman he defeated for the Democratic nomination. Politically, it's probably necessary. To reassure Americans that he is neither Muslim...

As someone who wrote "Getting Whitey: Michelle Obama's Secret Negro Agenda" satirizing the right's twisted vision of the aspiring black first couple, I understand what New Yorker cartoonist Barry Blitt was trying to accomplish with his now-notorious cover art. However, he did it poorly, and in doing so, he...

A CNN piece called "Obama says he's been 'very consistent' on Iraq," proves a classic of the "he said/she said" journalism of marketing and perception. It also--again--proves that Democrats don't know how to play that game.

The CNN story reports that on his campaign plane, Obama leveled accusations...

Washington Post columnist David Broder donned his rubber gloves and plucked from his inbox a report from the right wing Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. The organization fears that "America's national identity is eroding under the pressure of population diversity and educational slackness." Broder, on the other hand, sees no...

On the topic of patriotism, Barack Obama wrote the following for Time magazine:

"When I was a child, I lived overseas for a time with my mother. And one of my earliest memories is of her reading to me the first lines of the Declaration of Independence, explaining how its...