The Economist [of all people] endorses Obama

The presidential election

It’s time

Oct 30th 2008

America should take a chance and make Barack Obama the next leader of the free world

A

IT IS impossible to forecast how important any presidency will be. Back in 2000 America stood tall as the undisputed superpower, at peace with a generally admiring world. The main argument was over what to do with the federal government’s huge budget surplus. Nobody foresaw the seismic events of the next eight years. When Americans go to the polls next week the mood will be very different. The United States is unhappy, divided and foundering both at home and abroad. Its self-belief and values are under attack.

Obama’s Radical Palestinian Professor?

By MARC SANTORA and ELISSA GOOTMAN

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/31/nyregion/31khalil.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&ref=politics&adxnnlx=1225491832-hY/nO8vb8tZiBz5iyCHygw

Rashid Khalidi has been called a friend to Barack Obama and an enemy of Israel.

Rashid Khalidi had been bracing for the storm for months, friends said.

Since an April news report detailing his relationship with Senator Barack Obama, Mr. Khalidi, a Middle East scholar and passionate defender of Palestinian rights, had waited to see himself caricatured by Republicans as part of a rogues’ gallery of Obama associates, which has come to include the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. and William C. Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground.

He was surprised, the friends said, that so little criticism came — until this last frenzied week before the election, when Senator John McCain cited the April article in The Los Angeles Times about a dinner Mr. Obama attended in Mr. Khalidi’s honor in 2003, and questioned Mr. Obama’s commitment to Israel.

DEAR JOHN McCAIN – A Farewell note by Wajahat Ali

Dear John McCain, Sarah Palin, the RNC, Charlie Black, the corrosive spirit of Lee Atwater, Rove-ian politics, Sean Hannity, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Elizabeth Hasselback, Joe the Plumber and other respected members of your respected ilk:

Please stop. Just stop. Enough. No more. Is this how you really want to go out? Do you want the following hate filled gems to be the final symbol of your failed campaign? Is this how you want to be remembered?

According to you, Obama is now a cowardly, pseudo-Muslimy, Iran-first traitor who is more loyal to the “radical Muslim world” than to his own country.

[See McCain’s latest ad]

Really? That’s fascinating considering most of the Muslim world has the intelligence and common sense to recognize Obama’s Arabic name neither makes him Muslim nor Arab. And as a Muslim, I should know, we Muslims are like the Borg – we can identify one of our own through innate, radical “Muslim-y” powers. But, that’s our little secret – don’t tell anyone.

Poll: 23 Percent of Texans Believe Obama Is a Muslim

A University of Texas survey finds that 23 percent of registered voters in the state still believe Barack Obama is a Muslim, though the Democratic nominee for president is Christian.

FOXNews.com

Thursday, 2008-30-304

A new poll finds that 23 percent of registered voters in Texas believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim, even though the Democratic candidate has repeatedly explained that he is a church-going Christian.

The poll, conducted by the Texas Politics Project and Department of Government at The University of Texas in Austin, showed Obama trailing John McCain by 11 points in the Lone Star State. 

Voting Machine Glitches…already

(CNN) — Eight years after Florida’s hanging chads exasperated voters and helped usher in sweeping changes in voting technology, many election observers remain concerned about the accuracy of the electronic voting systems most Americans will use November 4.

Early voters cast ballots on touch-screen machines Wednesday in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Touch-screen machines can occasionally fail or register votes for unintended candidates. Optical-scan systems can have trouble reading paper ballots that are too long or marked with the wrong ink. At least one study suggests that electronic voting machines can be easily hacked.