I traditionally hesitate to get political pre-convention, because I've always felt that the only thing worse than the divisiveness of bickering down party lines in the US is the humiliating and self-defeating in-fighting that's wrecked the Democratic party for as long as I've been registered to vote—actually, longer.

But I'm dying to share my position in this primary with those of you who care, because I've seen so many smart Democrats lean in the wrong direction for precisely the wrong reason, and because I don't think I tried hard enough to convince some of my on-the-fence friends in New York to vote for Barack Obama before Tuesday—although I claim at least two Obama converts in two different states won by Hillary Clinton!

If you have no interest in reading my unqualified political opinions, at least check out these videos.

Barack Obama

Getting down to my supposed point, though, let's first acknowledge the fact that Obama and Clinton's official positions on major election issues are far, far more similar than different. A glance at this chart explains why almost no Democrat you talk to is citing campaign platforms as reasons for their choice in this primary.

Despite all the talk about experience versus change, the issue that should truly be at the forefront of every Democrat's mind is electability. No one can tolerate another four years of fear-mongering and hate.

Read on for why Obama is more electable.

update: Or, you could just read Peggy Noonan's article [thanks, Sean!] from The Wall Street Journal. She said it all a lot better than I did. And with fewer huge pics of Obama.

read on »

mockup of how face2face will be implemented from JR's site

French "undercover photographer" JR and his French/North African tech-savvy collaborator Marco put together this amazing but somewhat unfortunately named project called face2face [via wooster collective]: They're posting enormous close-up portraits of Israelis and Palestinians paired up by occupation on both sides of their heavily guarded borders.

The absolute best part of this project, in my not-so-humble opinion, is the sheer goofiness of these pictures. I'm a huge proponent of humor as a cure for pretty much all of life's ills—there were probably more jokes at my grandfather's funeral than there are at most people's weddings.

Anyway, JR and Marco hung portraits in the Palestinian territory this afternoon and will be doing the same on the Israeli side of the border this Wednesday. Their project even has a trailer that starts slow but gets interesting around 1:45 (-3:40 if the counter is running backwards). Especially fascinating is the parallel between the descriptions of the relationship between god and the human form that come from interviews with Jewish and Muslim religious men (at 4:15 or -1:17):

Embedded video doesn't seem to work in RSS, so you'll have to visit the actual post.

one of the vintage posters up for auction at Swann Galleries

These amazing vintage posters being auctioned off at Swann Galleries [via metafilter and kindly sent along by Sean] made me want to round out my vintage poster collection (which features WPA library posters and Soviet-era reading propaganda) with some Hebrew-language gems like this hilarious juice ad (but not with the creepy anti-Semitic posters in the collection).

The Zionist offerings among the collection also reminded me of a decidedly more unfortunate link I came across today, to this New York Times article about liberal Jews being accused of anti-Semitism for their views on Israel. I can't pretend to know what should be done about the terrible situation in Israel, but I have to wonder how conflating criticism of Israeli policies with anti-Semitism can help any side of this debate. As we've seen in the U.S., "with us or against us" rhetoric leads precisely nowhere constructive.

Save the Internet has a new video with a clear, dump-truck-metaphor-free explanation of net neutrality. If, like, the CEO of AT&T, you're not sure what net neutrality means, have a look-see, then sign the petition:

Embedded video doesn't work in RSS so you'll have to go to the actual post.

Today's featured article on Wikipedia, covering Stephen Colbert's controversial performance at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association dinner in April, leaves a few big questions unanswered. Essentially: How did this ever happen???? I mean, whose idea was it to invite Colbert in the first place? Had s/he never actually seen The Colbert Report or is there really someone dense enough out there to not register that level of sarcasm? OR (a tempting thought!) was it an inside job—was the entertainment booker a Colbert fan who planned it all along?

And most importantly: What happened to the poor sap afterwards?

A week late, I know, but hopefully I haven't missed my chance to say, "Finally, some heart-warming news from the ballots!"

MSNBC.com's midterm odometer

Congrats to enthusiastic voters, the newly Democratic Congress, and, of course, MSNBC.com for this amazing odometer rendering of the results, which I really think should be turned into a desktop widget for those nail-biting days after a big election—probably would've made a good number of office workers more productive on November 7th if we could've glanced at the corner of our screen instead of hitting Drudge Report every five minutes. I'm just sayin'…

Now: Let's see some change!

The Italian left's embrace of the Internet has partially been out of necessity: as Berlusconi owns most of the Italian media, views that counter his have been largely absent.

[From a great if:book post about an Italian "open source film" that provides myriad comments on their elections.]

Not to say that the situation here is quite that extreme, but…it's darned close, and for that reason we have sites like daily kos and common dreams—but a video project like the Italians have going on would be miles cooler, and far less alienating for moderates.