Go Obama!

My brother emailed me an assortment of interesting Obama bits today, including this attack of a letter to the editor ("I hope the voters of this country take a good hard look at Barack Hussein Obama's past before we dare to elect him president") from today's Memphis newspaper, and the smear campaign from which it takes its apparent origins. He writes, "Prepare for more of this stuff if Obama wins today," and I think unfortunately he's right. He also emailed a few more uplifting finds, including this great Washington Post dispatch from New Hampshire, but my favorite is this lovely observation from Slate's Dahlia Lithwick, who writes (in response to today's New York Times op-ed by Gloria Steinem):

In the end, it seems to me, Obama faces easier sledding today not because its easier to be a black man in American than it is to be a woman, but because he's modeled -- and rather beautifully -- how much simpler it is to be yourself than to become a piece of precision machinery, comprised of polls and talking points.