President-Elect Obama: the view from the Left

Self - ironization:

Abu Nimah's cognitively dissonant comment:

During the United States election campaign, racists and pro-Israel hardliners tried to make an issue out of President-elect Barack Obama's middle name, Hussein. Such people might take comfort in another middle name, that of Obama's pick for White House Chief of Staff: Rahm Israel Emanuel.

Abunimah's cognitive dissonance derives from his complete denial of the fact that it was Obama's Hussein middle name that made him so attractive and appealing to him and his ilk in the first place. And that his own preoccupation with Rahm's middle name is just as jeerable as his point about those "racists and pro-Israel hardliners", though much more pertinent in his case. Please note how he groups together the racists and pro-Israel hardliners. For Abinumah, to be pro-Israel is to be a racist, or at least, one very sympathetic to racists. In the next sentence, he pointedly focuses on Emanuel's "Israel" name. The proximity of name and ethnicity, you see, must mean that Rahm is in that reprehensible group of pro-Israel hardliners, which are so closely related to racists. Thus we have the Al-Jazeera type of argumentation which takes mere facts, emotions, suspicions, and prejudices and amalgamates the lot into some sort of gigantic, indisputable truth.

Let me just point out to him, that Obama's "Hussein" name is much responsible for the swooning of Hamas and other so-called Islamic "anti-imperialists" over him. Was he not born of a Muslim father? Was not his step father also a Muslim? Is not his name Hussein? Surely, these facts alone are enough to guarantee that he will share the Islamic view of Jews, America, and such like? For them, , as for their less congenial counterparts on the American Right, the name "Hussein" invariably invokes this man, rather than that man. Wonder why they would rather think of Hussein the genocidaire who handsomely rewarded Palestinian families who lost their sons in suicide missions, and not of Hussein who could never bring himself to hate Israel, or Israelis with the red hot viciousness considered mandatory in the Arab world?


The spineless capitulator:

The Daily Kos is really pissed off:

In the spirit of post-partisanship, and in spite of the American people's overwhelming votes for change in 2006 and 2008....

Shit, that wouldn't be any worse than appointing fierce Obama critic and Iraq War supporter Joe Lieberman to the Homeland Security committee.

But in all seriousness, I think we've now learned that Joe Lieberman is the smartest politician in DC. He knew Democrats were spineless capitulators who would cave at the merest threat no matter how many times he shit in their face.

He's probably having a great laugh about it just about now.

More, later.