Today's Stories

December 22, 2008

Pam Martens
Madoff's Money Trail Leads to Washington

December 19 - 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
An Ethnic Cleansing in America

Jeffrey St. Clair
Salazar and the Tragedy of the Common Ground

Paul Craig Roberts
Country Without Mercy

Patrick Cockburn
The Baathist "Coup Plot"

Felice Pace
Green Myopia: Obama's Appointments Reveal What's Wrong with the Environmental Movement

Diane Farsetta
The Pentagon's PR Slush Fund

George Ciccariello-Maher
By the Time I Get to Arizona: ICE Raids and Resistance in Flagstaff

Eric Bergoust
Extinct Lifestyles: Redefining Prosperity

Marjorie Cohn
Torture Without Regrets: Cheney's Unrepentent Confession

Stan Cox
Clothes and Commentaries That Don't Fit

Michael Donnelly
Clinton III: Continuity We Can Believe In

Robert Weissman
The Auto Bailout

Ralph Nader
Excluded Democracy: Scholastic and the Two Party System

Alan Farago
Shock and Awe Economics

Sam Smith
Not All Public Work is the Same

Timothy G. Hermach
What Happened on the Way to the Inauguration?

Seth Sandronsky
Who's Not Getting By and Why

Rannie Amiri
All Quiet on the Gazan Shore

David Yearsley
Bach as Jihadi

Martha Rosenberg
Wyeth's Pay-to-Play

Dave Lindorff
White House Lied About Iraqi Yellowcake Buy (But That's Not the Biggest Scandal)

Christopher Brauchli
Weekend at Bernie's: the Confinement of Mr. Madoff

Missy Beattie
President Meathead

Richard Rhames
Corporatizing the Kids

Stephen Martin
Full-Spectrum Dominance of the Big Lie

Paul Krassner
Milk and Twinkies

Lorenzo Wolff
Does Coldplay Give a Shit Anymore?

Poets' Basement
Kathwari, Halling and Payne

Worthy Group of the Weekend
Heartwood

December 18, 2008

Phillip Doe
The Man in the Hat: Salazar and the Status Quo

Ronnie Cummins
Vilsack: Another Shill for Monsanto

Jesse Sharkey
No School Left Unsold: Arne Duncan's Privatization Agenda

Saul Landau
Postcard from Venezuela

Peter Morici
What's Next for the Fed?

Dave Lindorff
Prosecuting Bush and Cheney for Torture

Panos Petrou
Days of Rage in Greece

Jeff Cohen /
Norman Solomon
The 2008 P.U.-litzer Prizes: the Stinkiest Media Performances of the Year

Worthy Group of the Day
Organic Consumer Alliance

December 17, 2008

Peter Lee
Pushing Pakistan Over the Edge

Conn Hallinan
Angels and Demons in Mumbai

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Fatal Flaw

Jeff Halper
Obama and the Israel-Palestine Conflict

Alan Farago
The Audacity of Parkland

Peter Morici
The Big Hole

Norm Kent
Obama Lights Up

Col. Douglas MacGregor
The Price of Expediency

Margaret Kimberley
Blacks and Gay Rights

Ron Jacobs
The Myth of the Good Guy: Waiting on a President to Do the Right Thing

Worthy Group of the Day
Campaign to End the Death Penalty

December 16, 2008

Vicente Navarro
A Forgotten Genocide: the Case of Spain

Patrick Cockburn
Each Shoe was Worth a Thousand Words

Thomas Michael Power
Back to the Pump: an Economic and Environmental Dead End

Jason Hribal
Orangutans, Resistance and the Zoo: the Story of Ken Allen and Kumang

Farzana Versey
Straw Warriors and the Pantomime of Patriotism

Wajahat Ali /
Ahmed Rashid
Indian Muslims: Defining Their Loyalty

Mats Svensson
The Order to Destroy has been Given

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Mumbai Terror's Afghan Roots

David Macaray
Workplace Violence and Termination Etiquette

Howard Lisnoff
Left Control of Academia? The Case of William Felkner

Worthy Group of the Day
AWR: the Last, Best Hope for Saving the Big Wild

December 15, 2008

Andy Worthington
Hit Me Baby One More Time: a History of Music Torture in War on Terror

Franklin Lamb
Why Hezbollah Stiffed Carter

Karl Grossman
Dr. Chu's Nuclear Prescription

Brian Cloughley
Land of the Free (To Torture and Imprison Without Trial)

Mary Lynn Cramer
Stiglitz's Foolishly Flawed Morality

Steve Early
From Nicky Pockets to Blago: Why Pay-to-Play is Bad for Labor

Thomas Christie
Pentagon Train Wreck Awaits Obama

Ken Paff
Remembering Ron Carey: a Great Labor Leader

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
What is India to Do?

Dave Lindorff
A Hero of Our Time: Muntadar al-Zaidi

Alan Farago
The Artless Dodger

Worthy Group of the Day
Davis-Putter Scholarship Fund

December 12 / 14, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Hail to Chicago, Beacon of American Values

Michael Hudson /
Jeffrey Sommers
The End of the Washington Consensus

David Price
The Leaky Ship of Human Terrain Systems

Jeffrey St. Clair
Nukes Up the Hudson

Frank Barat
An Israeli in Gaza: an Interview with Jeff Halper

John Ross
Writing a Thesis in Blood

Binoy Kampmark
Humanitarian Imperialism: Obama and the Genocide Task Force

David Macaray
Killing the Auto Bailout: a Dagger to the Heart of Organized Labor

Ralph Nader
Antidotes to Plunder: a Holiday Reading List

Eamonn Fingleton
Whatever Happened to Iris Chang?

Lawrence Velvel
Why Blagojevich Might Be Acquitted

Behzad Yaghmaian
The Housing Crisis: a Timebomb China Can't Defuse

Sam Husseini
Putting the Pro in Protest

Tom Barry
Incentives to Detain: How Immigrants Drive Prison Profits

Howard Lisnoff
Why I Went to Jail

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Immigration Problem

Raj Patel
The WTO and Other Fairy Tales

Ron Jacobs
The Manufacturing of History

Paul Watson
Risky Business Down Under

David Yearsley
They Also Serve Who Only Pull or Tread

Lorenzo Wolff
So You Want Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star...

Kim Nicolini
Finally, a Vampire Movie You Can Sink Your Teeth Into

Susie Day
Proposition 1984: the Problem with Heterosexuals

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Lerch and Crete

Worthy Group of the Weekend
Energy Justice

December 11, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Total Defeat for U.S. in Iraq

P. Sainath
After Mumbai

Vicken Cheterian
The Zarqawi Generation

Ray McGovern
Will Obama Buy Torture-Lite?

Dedrick Muhammad
Post-Racial Racism at the Post: the Undying Obsession with Black Family Values

Lee Sustar
Victory at Republic

Peter Morici
The Big Drag

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Must They Hate Us So?

George Wuerthner
Another Subsidy to Big Timber?

Christopher Brauchli
Mr. Berg's Strange Obsession

Worthy Group of the Day
Animal Balance

December 10, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Whose Interests Will Shape Obama's Change?

Mary Lynn Cramer
The Multi-Trillion Dollar Question

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Nuclear Weapons Obsolescence

Joshua Frank
Breaking the Stranglehold on Middle East News Coverage

Jack Ely
Stop Sobbing About Free Music Downloads: a Message to the Music Industry from the Lead Singer of the Kingsmen

Steve Conn
An Obama Public Works Program?

Lee Sustar
Republic Workers Target Bank of America

Glen Ford
The Die is Cast

Stephen Lendman
The Persecution of Syed Fahad Hashmi

Nadia Hijab
The Face of America

Dave Lindorff
We All Need a Union

Website of the Day
This One's For You, Senator Dodd

December 9, 2008

Mike Whitney
Card Check

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Us vs. Them

Ghada Karmi
The UN Resolution That Time Forgot

Dave Lindorff
A Car Dealer Explains Why the Bailout is a Raw Deal

Steve Breyman
Notes on a Green Economy: Managing Stuff in the 21st Century

Lee Sustar /
Nicole Colson
Raising the Stakes at Republic

Rev. William E. Alberts
God of Our Fathers

Martha Rosenberg
Bill Richardson: Secretary of Bloodsports

Sam Husseini
How Holbrooke Lied His Way Into a War

David Macaray
The UAW in Peril

Website of the Day
This Toxic Life

December 8, 2008

Steve Early
Is Obama Backing Off a Crucial Pledge to Labor?

Michael Hudson
Obama's Favoritism: Wall Street, Not the Auto Industry

Patrick Cockburn
Talking to a Lashkar Militant

Diane Farsetta
An Officer and a Conflicted Man: McCaffery, the Pentagon and Fleishman-Hillard

Paul Craig Roberts
Chapters in Imperial Hypocrisy

Daniel Gross
The Chicago Sit-Down Strike

Saul Landau
To Bail or Not to Bail?

Harvey Wasserman
Why John Bryson is Unfit for Energy Secretary

Mike Ferner
The New Generation of "Non-Lethal" Weapons

Norman Solomon
The Silent Winter of Escalation

David Michael Green
The Other Foot

Website of the Day
The Remains of Detroit

December 5 / 7, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Honeymoans From the Left

Brian Cloughley
Shambles in Afghanistan

Paul Craig Roberts
Muslim Revolution: How Washington Arrogance Helped Drive the Mumbai Attacks

Liaquat Ali Khan
Mumbai and the Kashmir Tinderbox

Farzana Versey
Mumbai's Charge of the Lightweight Brigade

Peter Lee
Pakistan Nears the Breaking Point

Peter Morici
Slouching Toward a Depression?

Ralph Nader /
Toby Heaps
Junk Cap-and-Trade

Yinon Cohen /
Neve Gordon
Obama Could End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Will He Meet the Challenge?

Wajahat Ali
Perverse Justice: the Holy Land Foundation Convictions

Johnny Barber
Aswad's Story: Illegal Detention and the Declaration of Human Rights

Alan Farago
Fallout from the Pass-Through Economy

Jeremy Scahill
Obama Doesn't Plan to End Occupation of Iraq

Mike Whitney
Powergrab in Ottawa

Ranjit Hoskote
Jahiliyya Versus Jihad

Carl Finamore
Thank God I'm an Atheist! (Or Boy is Bill O'Reilly in for a Big Surprise)

Marjorie Cohn
Obama and Women's Rights

Norm Kent
Tommy Chong, the Unanticipated Warrior

Missy Beattie
What Lies Ahead

Binoy Kampmark
Committing Suicide On-Line: the Briggs Case

David Macaray
The Best and the Brightest Redux: Too Many Brains, Not Enough Humility

Nancy Stohlman
Relational Activism

Ron Jacobs
Irreverent Politics Then and Now

David Yearsley
Thematics From the Golden Past

Lorenzo Wolff
Troubled Songs of Home and War

Poets' Basement
Orloski: The Door Opener

Website of the Weekend
In Prison My Whole Life

December 4, 2008

Ece Temelkuran
Inside the Ergenekon Case

Ralph Nader
Turning Crisis into Opportunity: Who Will Seize the Moment?

Harry Browne
The Bush-Obama National Security Strategy

Eamonn Fingleton
The American Car Industry: a Riposte to the Knockers

Conn Hallinan
The Syria Attack

Mike Whitney
Fiasco in Somalia: Another CIA Cock-Up

Stewart J. Lawrence
Obama and Latinos: Richardson, Alone, is Not Enough

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Message to Obama: Stop Killing Afghanis

Karyn Strickler
Show Us the Green, Before We Show You the Money

Jennifer Matsui
Obama-Cola: the Great National Temperance Beverage

Website of the Day
"He Ain't Got Laid in a Month of Sundays..."

December 3, 2008

Andrew Cockburn
What's Wrong with the U.S. Military

Sheldon Rampton
Mormon Homophobia: Up Close and Personal

Robert Weissman
Nationalize GM

Yifat Susskind
From Mumbai to Washington

William Blum
The Obama Bummer: Vote First, Ask Questions Later

Alan Singer
The Ghost of the Defunct Economist

David Macaray
Trampled Under Foot at Wal-Mart

Martha Rosenberg
Born With a Statin Deficiency? Line Forms to the Left!

Mats Svensson
The Crimes Have No Period of Limitations

Website of the Day
Why Bill Richardson's Nomination Should be Opposed

December 2, 2008

Jeremy Scahill
Obama's Kettle of Hawks

Paul Craig Roberts
The New Arms Race

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
The Mumbai Terror Attacks: Is Pakistan to Blame?

Sarah Anderson /
John Cavanagh
Skewed Priorities: How the Bailout Dwarfs Spending on Other Global Crises

William Blum
The Mythology of the War on Terrorism

John Ross
Mexico's Drug War Goes Down in Flames

Dave Lindorff
A Tale of Two Terror Attacks

Nicola Nasser
A Peace Process That Makes Peace Impossible

Steve Conn
Operation Redskin Removal

Robert Bryce
Coal Hard Facts

Website of the Day
Country, Funk, Soul

December 1, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
From Baghdad to Mumbai, by Way of Pakistan

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
Obama's Economic Team: Records of Failure

Vijay Prashad
The Fires in South Asia

Deepak Tripathi
Obama's Foreign Crises

Joshua Frank
Madam Secretary Clinton and the Middle East

P. Sainath
The Unlikely Martyrdom of Free Market Jihad

Alan Farago
The Right's War on Regulators

Binoy Kampmark
Sydney's Ball and Chain

Chris Genovali
Silent Fall

David Michael Green
Hope You Die Before You Get Old

Stephen Martin
The Chinese are Coming, the Chinese are Coming!

Website of the Day
Robert Rubin: Coward, Liar or Both?

November 28-30, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Time of Trouble

Mike Whitney
The Obama "Dream Team": Rubin Clones and Other Fakers

Ted Honderich
What is the Meaning of Obama's Election?

Tom Kerr
Preserving Filthy Lucre (Or Becoming My Dad)

Mike Ely
The Conquest of New England

David Yearsley
Hymns of the Conquest

Deepak Tripathi
Uproar in Police-State Britain

Sonja Karkar
Gaza's Death Throes

Ramzy Baroud
Salvation in a News Broadcast

Robert Weitzel
Israel's Settlement on Capitol Hill

Robert Roth
Can We Create a Movement for Change?

Carlos Fierro
Obama and the End of Racism?

David Macaray
How to Kill a Union

David Rosen
A New Sexual Agenda

James Cockcroft
Indigenous People Rising

Stan Cox
The Most Disappointing Gift

Steve Conn
Talking Turkey About College Basketball

Stephen Martin
The Electromagnetic Pulse and Economic Warfare

Richard Rhames
Busty Bimbettes, Bombs and Brand Obama

Kim Nicolini
Women as Products and Cannibalistic Achievers

Lorenzo Wolff
A Battle Cry for the Confused and Vulnerable

Poets' Basement
Woods, Harrison and Corseri

December 22, 2008

Base Alienation

Obama's Team of Rivals

By GARY LEUPP

With surprising haste and insensitivity, Barack Obama’s alienating the most serious, activist component of his political base. The blogosphere’s been seething in indignation for weeks. Chris Bowers, of the OpenLeft.com blog, calls Obama’s cabinet “a center-right foreign policy team” and pronounces himself  “incredibly frustrated. Progressives are being entirely left out of Obama’s major appointments so far. . . Even after two landslide elections in a row, are our only governing options as a nation either all right-wing Republicans, or a centrist mixture of Democrats and Republicans? Isn’t there ever a point when we can get an actual Democratic administration?”  Markos Moulitsas, founder of the Daily Kos site, calls the Obama team “tone deaf” to the views of “the American electorate that voted in overwhelming numbers for change from the discredited Bush policies.”

The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel, protesting the retention of Robert Gates as Obama’s Secretary of Defense, writes, “Maybe being right about the greatest foreign policy disaster in US history doesn’t mean much inside the Beltway? How else to explain that not a single top member of Obama’s foreign policy/national security team opposed the war---or the dubious claims leading up to it?” “I don’t know what he’s doing,” says Tom Hayden. “This is not governing from the center. This is governing from the past.” Historian Paul Street observes: “It bothers a growing number of Obama’s liberal backers to learn that, as Wall Street Journal editorial board member Matthew Kaminski notes, ‘the Obama camp says the future president, who won running from the left, intends to govern from the center’ (WSJ, December 6/7, 2008, A8).”

A lot of liberal Democrats---people who believe in the system (although maybe less so day by day, since it isn’t being very good to them)---are echoing the complaint from David Corn of Mother Jones: “This Wasn’t Quite the Change We Pictured.” Perhaps they feel, to put it in Marxian terms, that he exploited their labor power during the election campaign, and now for all their efforts on his behalf he’s slapping them in the face.

It should be plain to everyone that the inexperienced junior senator from Illinois defeated his heavily favored rival Hillary Clinton in the primaries for one principal reason: she’d voted for the war on Iraq in 2002 while he, still in the Illinois state legislature, opposed it. His victory over McCain surely owes much to the economic crisis, which eclipsed the war as voters’ primary concern; still, it’s safe to say that Obama owes his presidency to the antiwar voter.

This is not to say that Obama was ever a consistent or eloquent spokesman for the antiwar movement; on the contrary. He called the invasion of Iraq “dumb,” “rash,” “a strategic blunder”---language lacking both analytical clarity and moral outrage. He’s always called for a “responsible” (as opposed to immediate) withdrawal, his latest proposal involving a flexible timeline of sixteen months. Meanwhile since mid-2007 he’s been agitating for at least two more divisions to be sent into Afghanistan, which he sees as the true center of the “war on terror,” and he’s called for strikes into Pakistan such as have indeed become routine in recent months under the Bush administration. In his June 2008 speech before AIPAC Obama, like Bush,  declared that no options should be left off the table in dealing with Iran’s nuclear program, which he assumes (contrary to the November 2007 NIE) is a military program.  In that same AIPAC presentation he called the Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a “terrorist organization,” thereby aligning himself with those who voted for the Kyl-Lieberman Act (for which he’d been absent and actually described as “saber-rattling”). He has, in short, proven himself quite hawkish, and those fancying him the “antiwar candidate” have been naïve. There having been no antiwar candidate, those believing in the system had to invent one in order to vote for one.

During his debate with Clinton on January 31, Obama declared, “I don’t want to just end the war, but I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place. That’s the kind of leadership that I think we need from the next president of the United States. That’s what I intend to provide.” But maybe what we’re seeing is a war within Obama’s own mindset. Not a war, mind you, about whether or not to champion U.S. imperialism; if he had doubts about that he wouldn’t be a U.S. politician, or at least a highly successful one attracting the money and endorsements that he has. He is plainly a creature of U.S. capitalism and seeks to enhance its geopolitical advantages; that is a big part of his job description. The question is, will he encourage a different mindset through some bold center-left or at least innovative appointments to the remaining slots (there’s been some buzz about a gay Secretary of the Navy, for example), through some firm steps to expose and punish the crimes of the Bush administration, through a rapid withdrawal from Iraq overriding his commanders’ advice, through diplomatic engagement with Iran, etc.? Or will all the talk of change boil down to the mere fact of an African-American in the White House?

 Obama’s staff and cabinet picks suggest a deep desire for acceptance by the existing power structure. It’s as though he’s bending over backwards to disabuse anyone of those nasty campaign rumors that he’s a cypto-Muslim, Arabophiliac, quasi-socialist or closet Marxist. It’s as though he’s actively soliciting the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval from Joe Lieberman, Karl Rove, Henry Kissinger, Lindsay Graham, Michael Goldfarb, Richard Perle and the other extreme reactionaries expressing their delight at his cabinet choices, and viewing such support as recognition of his own special gift as a healer and uniter. But how can he possibly expect to unite his antiwar base with his rightwing foreign policy team?

I wonder if there might be a dangerous narcissism here. Obama’s staff has hinted at his political strategy for explaining his remarkable metamorphosis from the First Black President to the First Center-Right Black President. He’s a second Lincoln, like that greatest of U.S. presidents, leading the nation out of a period of terrible division and crisis. Hence his leadership, like that of that valiant Republican from Illinois, must transcend petty rivalries.

Here’s where a book by a popular historian happens to come in handy. Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book on Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet, Team of Rivals: The Political Brilliance of Abraham Lincoln seems almost designed to confer legitimacy on Obama’s betrayal of his most ardent supporters’ expectations. Published in 2005, it had caught Obama’s attention during the campaign. He told Meet the Press’s Tim Russert in May 2008, “Awhile back there was a wonderful book written by Doris Kearns Goodwin called Team of Rivals, in which she talked about how Lincoln basically pulled in all the people who had been running against him into his Cabinet because whatever, you know, personal feelings there were, the issue was how can we get this country through this time of crisis? And I think that has to be the approach that one takes.” The book has actually been criticized for being a simplistic, tendentious treatment of Lincoln’s decisions and their impact on the fate of the union, but the academic point is irrelevant here. Politically, it’s very useful to place Obama in this mold, and to represent the protests of the lefties as petty and “divisive.” 

Obama staffers argue that cabinet posts have been decided on the basis of  “credentials” and “expertise” rather than “ideology.” One can of course point out that Secretary of Defense Gates designated to continue in office has applied his expertise to the execution of a criminal imperialist war, and that Secretary of State-designate Clinton voted to authorize that war, based upon their ideologies, ideologies being things that all of us have.  “How can selecting only pro-war Cabinet members and advisers be justified on the grounds of ‘competence’ -- as though one’s support for the War has nothing to do with competence?” asks Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald.

The bottom line: Millions took Obama seriously when he promoted himself as the candidate of change. Two days after his election, he made his first appointment: Rahm Emanuel---Washington insider, extreme Zionist, supporter of both the first and second Iraq Wars---as his chief of staff. Then a slough of center-right appointments, not a one “progressive Democrat” that would be recognized as such by any so self-defined. Meanwhile Obama’s magnanimous approval of the rehabilitation of Joe Lieberman, who was  allowed to keep his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. Then the statement from Obama’s staff that the Justice Department under the new administration would not likely launch new criminal probes into Bush-era torture. All this in the interest of national reconciliation, pointedly excluding the “ideological” antiwar liberal-progressive Democrats, to say nothing of genuine anti-imperialists.

Curiously, he seems to have really stepped over the line not with a war-monger cabinet appointment, or ominous signal on foreign policy,  but choice of a cleric to deliver the invocation at his inauguration. The Rev. Rick Warren is of course an outspoken opponent of gay rights,  a campaigner against Prop. 8 that passed in California the same day that Obama was elected president. (He’s also agreed with Sean Hannity on Fox New that the U.S. out to “take out” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, recalling televangelist Pat Robertson’s 2005 call for Hugo Chavez’s assassination.)

For many gay men and lesbians, Nov. 4 was a bittersweet day: they overwhelming favored Obama for president, and yet the setback to the cause of gay marriage was a bitter, unexpected blow. Obama’s choice of Warren for the national spotlight at his inauguration had to have been the product of considerable deliberation; it is a gesture to the religious right, a bid for (further) acceptance from the center-right.

It’s of course produced a firestorm. “Now it has officially gone too far,” writes Sarah Posner in the Nation. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, hitherto an Obama fan, announced, “We are left with the cold, hard political fact that this is a lose-lose proposition for Barack Obama, the first big mistake of his post-election politicking.  . .Obama’s supporters among centrists and progressives. . .just dumped a big bucket of tarnish all over Obama’s star power.”

Obama’s response to the criticism was very much in the “team of rivals” spirit: “It is no secret,” he told reporters somewhat haltingly, “that I am a fierce advocate for equality for gay and lesbian Americans. I would note that a couple of years ago I was invited to Rich Warren’s church to speak despite his awareness that I held views entirely contrary to his when it came to gay and lesbian rights…” So granting a grand public stage to someone who compares gay and lesbian unions to pedophilia and incest is a mere case of reciprocity, another friendly teaming of rivals for the national good…

Perhaps Obama and his team believe that his charisma is so great that he can ascend to office as a Bush Lite, arguing with the pundits that this is, after all, a “center-right nation,” and that he doesn’t need the support of those who organized to bring him into office. Maybe he thinks as he alienates one base or two, he can easily enough secure others. African-Americans, after all, weren’t generally behind him until spring of 2008. Maybe he’ll win over the “family values” and “bomb Iran” folks next. (Check out Bill Kristol’s latest Weekly Standard piece: “A President-Elect’s Progress,” praising Obama’s decision on Rev. Warren.)

Team of Rivals: The Political Brilliance of Barack Obama is a book waiting to be written.

Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades.

He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu

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