AnimaMundi

Barack Bhangra Reprise

I believe it's time to bring this one back.

Will It Make A Difference In Our Day To Day Lives?

McCain vs. Obama

Maybe and maybe not, but I am going to vote for the person who seems real, vital and not confused.

Crooks and Liars do a pretty good job too.

NOLA and 2008 Presidential Politics

The 2008 presidential campaign has focused mainly on the economy, the Iraq war, how well they fist punch, web surfing technique and the diet of the candidates. Oh yes, and the movie star quotient. The flooding of New Orleans and its three year struggle to obtain housing, healthcare and other infrastructural necessities has remained on the sidelines if at all. Hullabaloo-Digsby emphasizes the need to bring the discussion of what happened and continues to happen in NOLA into the center of the debate and campaign.

She also mentions Trouble The Water, a Sundance recognized documentary film by the producers of Farenheit 911 and Bowling for Columbine.

Via Suspect Device

The Politics of Politics

"They've got a set of Republican waiters on one side and a set of Democratic waiters on the other side, but no matter which set of waiters brings you the dish, the legislative grub is all prepared in the same Wall Street kitchen." --Huey Long

I became essentially apolitical in 1972. That was the year George McGovern was swamped in the presidential election and we got the infamous tricky Dick. I have voted since, in 2000 and 2004 elections. K. had never voted in her life until a friend and I persuaded her to register and vote in the 2004 presidential election. So while at DMV, she thought she would register to vote at the same time. Come election day, she went to the local Methodist church to vote. Faith-based voting, I called it. When the people at the church looked for her name, she was told that she was not registered to vote. She told them that she has registered at the dreaded DMV. Your name is not on the list. You have to go to the county courthouse and get a signed affidavit from a judge. Along with 1,567 other people. Not about to go around and around the jacaranda tree, K. voiced her anger and left, never to vote again. As we later learned this happened all over the land of the free to vote. I'm sure the Suffragettes would have appreciated this whole planned fiasco.

Barack Bhangra

Just when you thought that politics couldn't become any more boring, along comes Barack Obollywood! Bhangra, baby.

The New Yorker Cover & OWLS

Here I go again. Politics. The latest cover of The New Yorker has caused a bit of noise. This pretty much sums it up.

"See, the Rude Pundit's problem with the whole Barack-as-Muslim and Michelle-as-Black-Panther plus burning flag and bin Laden's picture in the Oval Office isn't that it's particularly offensive. It's that it's just not very funny. It's not even enough to make you go, "Hmmm." You glance at it once and think, "Yeah, some people think that, don't they? That's a shame." And there the whole joke ends. There's no more levels to it. It's like an Upper East Side version of South Park, an elitist attempt at crude humor, like an ironic fart at a wine tasting."

Fedora Tip Gastriques

Greg of Suspect Device also says it quite well.

And then there's Victor LaValle's take over at Maud Newton's site:

One dear friend in particular has been privy to a certain kind of dinner conversation. She’s in her mid-30’s but she dines out with Older White Liberals sometimes. And at those dinners the OWLS all say the same thing whenever the question of Obama’s Presidency arises: “I just don’t think the nation’s ready,” they say. “I mean I’m ready, I’d just love it. But I don’t think the nation’s ready yet.”

Inevitably these folks are over 50, generally well-off and liberal to a fault. And yet, now that Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee for President they just can’t seem to get behind him. The last thing they’ll say on the subject is, “I don’t know what it is, but there’s just something about him that I can’t get behind.”

"But still, truth is truth. While much has been made about the fears of working-class whites in Pennsylvania and, of course, the white South, this New Yorker cover is the product of a different but just as panicked constituency, the unassailable Upper West Side."

It's a friggin' cartoon, peoples.