And we’ll kick off with this gem of a picture gallery from The Guardian:

(Thanks to John Q for the link.)

Here’s the story behind this doodle:

Announcing the meeting, an Obama spokesman said:

“It’s well known that they share an important belief that Americans want and deserve a more effective and efficient government, and will discuss ways to work together to make that a reality.”

And here was Keith Olbermann’s take on the news last night:

Blimey. First Joe Lieberman, then Hillary Clinton, now John McCain. Has Barack ever met a politician he didn’t like?

Click to listen to Chris’s conversation with John Comaroff. (52 minutes, 24 mb mp3)

There’s a bracing analysis here from a man who makes it his business to jar our perspective — whose definition of anthropology boils down to “critical estrangement.” Anthropology won the election, Comaroff says, only half kidding. He means not just that Barack Obama is the son of an anthropologist but has a mind to stand outside the consensus when he must.

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Starting this Saturday, Barack Obama is going to be broadcasting to the nation - nay, the world - via the medium of this here new-fangled computer thingy. Every week. Think of him as a 21st century FDR, if you will.

Obama’s weekly video addresses are an example of the promised a) transparency and b) new-fangledness (also known as ‘technology’) that the Obama campaign said it would bring to the presidency.

They’ll go out on both YouTube and change.gov - and in fact, his team have already got the ball rolling with this video below.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then he’ll begin. Or rather: transition chief Valerie Jarrett will begin:

In his article, Pilger is concerned for the “brown-skinned” people of Pakistan under the assumption that Obama has vowed to attack the country and rain down some nukes. He hasn’t. His specific point regarding taking out Bin Laden if credible intelligence existed is perfectly sensible. Given that the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are doing their best to de-stabilise Pakistan and regularly killing more people there every month than the American govt - I would suggest Pilger is directing his ire at the wrong people especially if he cares for “brown skinned” people.

More importantly, his implication that Obama is merely a stooge of Zionists who have used “the black middle and management class” to further their own aims smacks of Uncle Tom jibes that really annoy me. You know, it is possible that black and brown people do become successful on their own talents or (horror of horrors) aspire to be rich and powerful. The far left has a real problem in dealing with ethnic minorities because it expects all of them to be revolutionary brothers and sisters. If somehow they veer away from that sterotype it can only be because their pawns of a wider conspiracy.

This is why I think Pilger’s race baiting can’t be taken seriously, among other points.

Quickly, on to other points, raised by David Semple:

1) Firstly, Obama is accused of continuing Bush’s wars, despite the fact Obama has been more outspokenly against the Iraq war than most Democrats. The man hasn’t gotten into the White House yet! What is he meant to do other than passionately argue against it and vote against it (as he has done)?

And even then, abruptly pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan without a slow exit strategy that strengthens local Afghani and Iraqi governments would be an immensely stupid strategy. It would make things worse for everyone in the long term. We went in by mistake. Now we have to at least ensure we don’t leave things worse than they are.

2) David says “Obama is born into given material conditions” - which is flatly untrue. He was born into lower middle-class family and worked his way up by studying hard and working longer than most people around him. To say he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth is distorting history. Obama worked on many campaigns in Chicago for the poor and under-represented.

His policies and ideas come from Saul Alinsky - the guy who was primarily obsessed with how to organise the powerless masses. These sorts of backgrounds should raise the spirits of Marxists. And yet all they can do is bicker and try to condemn the brother as an Uncle Tom. Most disappointing.

3) David also dissmises my own point that Obama built a massive grass-roots organisation. Let me try and put it a different way. Marxists and socialists have a different view of society that most people in America do not subscribe to. You can blame that on the media or whatever - but people are broadly happy with the structures they have.

If they want to challenge this, they have to build a grass-roots movement to do this. After all, they are bottom-up, are they not? The point I’m making is that Obama has done this better than they have ever managed - and managed to involve more American people directly in electing their President than any American politician ever has (from the far left to the far right). Now you can dismiss this if you want to as showmanship but I was there and I can tell you there’s more to it than that. But that point is moot.

The point is, if the far left can’t even muster up something even remotely resembling a broad grass-roots movement then they really have no right to claim they know what’s best for the majority. After all, neither Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney nor the other socialist parties in the US managed anything useful in terms of votes. They’re all pissing in the wind. So my point is, if they can’t manage anything less than an abysmal showing in votes, then clearly they’re not convincing anyone with their rhetoric.

4) The media. David Semple says:

Thirdly, no one is considering that, since Obama’s grassroots movement is pretty ethereal in that it involved activists simply turning up to do what they were told, how these people might exercise any influence on Obama as President. All Obama will have to go on will be general opinion polls - which are in turn influenced by the media. As Nick Davies will tell you, our fourth estate is probably not the fairest assessor of the Left

This may apply to the UK but not to the USA. In the United States the left-wing media is mostly the online blogs and some magazines like The Nation/Newsweek and maybe TNR if you want to stretch it. But the blogs are overwhelmingly popular and have driven the agenda more than anyone else (other than maybe Saturday Night Live, the Daily Show and Keith Olbermann). The American media is now more people driven and bottom up than ever before - one of the reasons why Obama had to fight hard to suppress damaging smears about him.

The activists didn’t simply turn up - they organised themselves and had the ability to criticise the campaign and turn against Obama more than any other campaign.

I’m not blinded by the Obama campaign. But if you want to criticise it, at least do so on the right points. Pilger’s article was completely expected hogwash.

Update: Neil Robertson points out other factual inaccuracies in Pilger’s diatribe.

Here’s the story.

And here.

And here:

“The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin’s attacks.”

This revelation came out of the recently released, seven-part Newsweek report (I haven’t made it to that part yet) and has been picked up by a few news outlets, including our own Daily Telegraph above.

Somehow, I think it should have been picked up by a few more.

Sod John McCain’s gracious concession speech. Sod Sarah tryin’ to be all cute, bein’ filmed bakin’ and talkin’ about huntin’ back in her kitchen’ at home in’ Alaska. She and that campaign tried to instill blatent hatred and fear about Barack Obama - and, not suprisingly, The Angry Mob took up that baton and ran with it… to its logical conclusion. To mix my metaphors somewhat.

Oh, and one more thing? Sarah Palin is still giving her stump speech. Still.

I knew when she said she “didn’t blink” that this woman had no self-awareness - because she was just about the only person in the country to think that her lack of experience, intellectual curiosity and gravitas were not a problem when deciding to run for the second highest office in the land (well, her and John McCain and his advisors).

And in that sense, Palin is absolutely a product of the Right (a lack of self-awareness and truth about a situation being their MO).

But her continuation as if she did nothing wrong; the talk among Republicans of her being a candidate in 2012… Both of these things are signs that the GOP just doesn’t get it - still - and continues to be filled with people who think that it’s perfectly acceptable to campaign and talk this way.

GOP: don’t you dare, dare choose this woman to be your candidate in 2012. Keep her in Alaska. And far away from all of us*.

*Except Russians, who she can see from her house

*Update* I just read this by Glenn Greenwald (via Andrew Sullivan):

“It’s just a fact that there are all sorts of people close to Obama who have enabled those Bush policies and who are mobilizing now and attempting to ensure that nothing meaningful occurs in these areas. It simply is noteworthy of comment and cause for concern — though far from conclusive about what Obama will do — that Obama’s transition chief for intelligence policy, John Brennan, was an ardent supporter of torture and one of the most emphatic advocates of FISA expansions and telecom immunity. It would be foolish in the extreme to ignore that and to just adopt the attitude that we should all wait quietly with our hands politely folded for the new President to unveil his decisions before deciding that we should speak up or do anything.”

As Greenwald points out in his article, rather worryingly - although not altogether unsurprisingly - Obama is surrounding himself with an awful lot of Democrats who let George Bush get away with murder (and torture and wiretapping and…) over the past eight years. This is probably pragmatic, sensible and to be expected - some of these Steps In The Right Direction may turn out to be baby steps, after all. But it’s also all the more reason why we lefties need to hold him accountable.

And isn’t Obama aware that, “the American elite has grown adept at using the black middle and management class.” After all, the guy couldn’t have done it on his own back and defeated two of the most powerful campaign machines. It’s all a Zionist plot see, there’s too many Jews hanging around Obama. Jeez. Bring back George Bush, at least Pilger was happy then.

Good to see the far-left hasn’t lost any of its stupidity. I think what really annoys the hell out of Pilger is that Obama has built the largest grass-roots movement in modern American political history, one more led by the people than the far left has ever managed to create. Marxists claim to speak for the masses but it must surely be a bit annoying that they’ve never managed to find so many volunteers or be so democratic as political movements.

It's no surprise, then, that the party base want revenge. There is already outrage at the gentle approach President-elect Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have taken thus far. However, they ought to remember the proverb about not cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. Kicking Lieberman out of the party might send a message that disloyalty will be punished, but other than that it would accomplish precious little. It would be far wiser for Democrats to send a forgiving and non-partisan message, and keep Lieberman on board for important Senate votes. There is currently a real prospect of their controlling a 60-seat majority in the Senate, which would let them stop Republican filibusters derailing their legislative goals. These are still goals that Lieberman shares, despite his alienation from the party. Here's hoping Democrats don't give him more reason to subvert these goals. Lieberman is the one who has been cutting off his nose to spite his face, and there is still a chance that he will come to see that.