Weekend Politics
On the train coming home from Ikea Saturday, we ran into two fresh American ex-pats, in Sydney for a year now, lately working on a rap video for Anthony Mundine, and started up a conversion to recruit them into Democrats Abroad. They seemed very enthusiastic, and I hope they’ll come to a meeting, but I mention it because, now that Barak Obama is officially in the race, it was somewhat notable to me that they were suggestive of their support for Hillary Clinton, Obama’s biggest rival for the nomination.

That aside, Obama’s in, and he’s getting a lot of notice, including this latest nonsense from John Howard, interjecting himself in American politics, in a way that if an American was doing it during one of his campaigns, we hear plenty of complaints about. Is he going to start calling Obama “Osama” next? Mr. Gibbs, the Obama campaign spokesman, is right, up to a point, about the commitment to Iraq; although I don’t intend any criticism of the soldiers, on a pro rata basis, Australia’s troop deployment is 15% of America’s, and faces apparently far less immediate danger. Mr. Howard should just butt out. Or, as Obama suggests, supply more troops (although my calculations suggest only an additional 7-8,000, not 20,000).