That a document written in large part by slaveholders who decided to count some 700,000 enslaved former Africans as three-fifths of a human being—or, indeed, that allowed for the continued existence of formal slavery in the first place—can be considered remarkable is astounding, as is the faith Hansen seems to have in the U.S. oligarchy. Expressing enthusiasm for the prospect of a McCain presidency is clearly a horrifying position; little more need be said on that. Hansen’s final take on the newest occupant of the White House, though, is similarly of marginal value: claiming that Obama—who, to briefly review, has overseen the transfer of trillions of dollars to the very financial institutions that precipitated the current economic downturn, entirely jettisoned hope for transition to a single-payer health-insurance program in the U.S., requested a ‘defense’ budget larger than that of Bush, backpedaled on curbing Israel’s ongoing colonization of the West Bank, moved toward normalizing relations with the very leadership that has overseen genocide in Darfur, escalated war in Afghanistan, and endorsed the Congress’s pathetic proposals to reduce carbon emissions by around 4 percent by 2020 relative to 1990 levels—is “still our best hope” is entirely unjustified and obfuscatory in the extreme.