I'm not really much of a morning person, yet here I am wide awake two hours before I need to get up for the day.

I went to bed around midnight, and it's 5:30 now, and the world around me has literally changed -- we have a fresh layer of snow on the ground this morning here in Vail.

None of this has sunk in yet.

That America could fall for George Bush just 48 months ago, and then suddenly favor -- by a landslide -- some black guy with a foreign name, who wants to talk to your five year olds about sex while palling around with terrorists, redistribute your hard-earned money and property, seeks the destruction of Israel and "doesn't see America the way you and I do;" is unreal.

Yesterday was an electoral Iwo Jima for Generation X.

It was a combined effort from a number of Americans to earnestly raise our flag once again, after it had been battered, tattered and misrepresented over the last eight years.

I'm not sure we even fully appreciate what just happened yesterday, but the 80 to 90 percent of people over the world who were pulling for Obama may have an idea of what it means.
Jon Stewart, in the closing minutes of the program last night, when an Obama victory was evident, said something to the effect that our nation has finally lived up to its promise; that we could show and not just tell.

And Obama is the embodiment of the American dream, regardless of what you think about his politics. Raised on food stamps, he rose to the top of his class, excelled in the Ivy League, remained humble enough to lend a hand to people having a rough time in his state, and somehow managed to beat the Clinton political machine last year. As Giuliani said, but without the dickish overtone, "Only in America."

Grant Park, where the melting pot of a million-plus people gathered to hear our president-elect speak for the first time, was the epicenter of the '68 riots that found us at one of our lowest points. That so many waited so many hours just to see some politician speak for a few minutes is by itself remarkable.

I'm coolly drinking all this in, then the polls close on the West Coast. I watched the election mix channel on DirecTV, which was actually eight different mini-screens of election coverage on a single channel.

One by one, within the span of maybe 10 seconds, the screens all flip with the announcement Obama will be our next president.

And then someone in that sea of faces at Grant Park vibrantly waved a huge American flag, and I lost it.

Our curse was broken as a nation. It wasn't that McCain would have been that bad of a president so much as it was a statement that -- hey, we're in a bind, and we'll take the most talented guy available instead of a war hero.

And it didn't matter one damn bit what color his skin was or what his name sounded like.
Obama never ran as a black candidate, or even as the democratic candidate. Through his words, he sounded to a lot of Gen-Xers, who missed out on the Kennedy brothers, like someone out of a history book with his fiercely intelligent framing of issues delivered with eloquence.

We spat out the venomous and shallow Rovian smear politics in one fell swoop.

To finally see the American flag hoisted and waving in the night air, to see tears streaming down people's faces as the news rushes over them, to know that hope finally conquered fear in an election...well, it was something special.

Then our 44th president came out for what could have easily been an over-hyped victory lap.
But he again rose to the occasion and didn't make the evening about him, but about us. Through the eyes of the 106-year-old woman from Atlanta, we saw ourselves grow up as a nation.

We've made a statement about who we really are as a nation, and Lady Liberty has never looked sexier.

My dogs are out in the pre-dawn, romping around on a fresh layer of snow.

For all of us, the sun can't rise fast enough.

Seriously.

I'm dyin' over here.  Palms sweaty, elevated heartrate, and my legs are jackhammering the hell out of the carpet.

I know they don't mean a thing, and are probably absurdly inaccurate (04) BUT...I don't care.

I can only imagine this is similar to a serious drug habit...and I've gotsta haves my polls.

After perusing one metric assload of sites, I can't find a thing.

Anyone got some links?  I'm getting the shakes.

Here's an idea I had recently that I found intriguing, in an offensive sort of way:

The election is three days away, and I'm watching KU - K-State on TV here at 10:30 on a Saturday morning. A cold front has come in, with temps hovering in the upper thirties. Just setting the tone there.

Anyway, the game approached kickoff, and they introduced "Kivisto Field" in Lawrence, and my thoughts turned to recent reports of Kivisto having some legal issues, being removed from his position amid scandal, etc.  And my reaction was "so what?" I'm still rooting for KU, and the haters can piss off because our playing field, donated by Mr. Kivisto, is legit. If you complain about that, you're not a die-hard Jayhawk fan.

So here's where the offensive part comes in:  for parts of what Gov. Palin would call "Pro America," blind devotion and rabid allegiance to your university has been supplanted by blind devotion and rabid allegiance to the idea of "Amurrica." Now, those college-education elites sneer at true fans for loving their country too much, but the fact is, if you're complaining about our country, you're not a die-hard American.

Alright, it's game time - hopefully we have our shit together this week, because this one could make or break us.

The madness is almost over.

Robo-calls and pollsters, indy voters and undecideds, yard signs, bumper stickers, swing states and Joe the Plumber -- all vanish overnight next week in what nearly everyone trumpets as the most important election in a generation.

Senators McCain and Obama, and their spouses and running mates, all visited Colorado in recent weeks to energize supporters in the home stretch of the election. But at the time of this writing, Colorado is sliding from a toss-up to a light-blue state on many electoral maps, most notably on NBC's "Meet the Press" last weekend.

Despite daytime drive-by appearances from members of both campaigns, CNN's John King reported top McCain aides said they must find a way to "make the math work without Colorado."

Subsequent reports from other sources confirmed this, and the McCain campaign has shifted precious advertising resources to other key states, including Pennsylvania.

Last Sunday, Dan Balz of the Washington Post argued Colorado is a "case study of the balance of power" between the two candidates, with Obama enjoying a substantial financial advantage and impressive ground game with legions of volunteers and paid staffers, while McCain faces an uphill grind by nearly any measure, the most recent of which came from the Rocky Mountain News and had him lagging 12 points behind Obama.

A few questions linger, then, in the remaining hours before Election Day: Is Obama's ground game really that good, and what difference could it make? And given that political pundits and pollsters were proven wrong so many times this primary season -- with voters relegating Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton to the sidelines -- are polls and projections even accurate anymore? Is Colorado really light blue?



"Everybody's shouting -- Which side are you on?"

Life in a battleground state is a gift and a curse as it's next to impossible to turn on a radio or television or pick up a paper or magazine without enduring a barrage of pandering and posturing on every local, state and national issue imaginable.

At this stage of the game, messages from floundering campaigns become more vitriolic and scattered, while frontrunners tiptoe to the safety of the finish line.

For those with a passive interest in politics, this constant drone can register pretty high on the "annoying" scale, somewhere between hearing Gilbert Gottfried's voice and fingernails on a chalkboard.

But for serious political junkies, battleground states are God's Country.

"It's exciting. It makes the campaign that much more interesting and that much more work, but it's been fun and a challenge," said Randy Milhoan, chair of the Eagle County
Republicans. "It's interesting to be in a state that may be the deciding factor. It could come down to Colorado, and it could even boil down to the rural regions of Colorado, and we've never been a part of it before."

Carole Onderdonk, co-chair of the Eagle County Democratic Party, was similarly thrilled to be involved in a tight race.

"It makes it pretty exciting because we get to see all the candidates here more than once, and not just to raise money, but to talk to people," she said, adding Eagle County's predominantly unaffiliated voting population compounded interest in the election.

And attention paid to the presidential race has meant more people are involved in the all-important "ground game," said Debbie Marquez of the Eagle County Democratic Party, who noted the local scene was unlike any other she'd witnessed.

"We've never seen this many people so energized, excited and inspired by a candidate to work as hard as people have been doing," she said. "They're putting in the hours for the get-out-the-vote effort that's never been seen in Eagle County, and that's only accomplished with volunteers who are ready to work for change in our country."

Onderdonk said voter registration efforts in Eagle County succeeded "beyond our best dreams," and a strong Democratic turnout could be the linchpin for Obama to win the state's nine electoral votes.

"The important thing in Eagle County is to win by as large a plurality as we can to counteract votes in the Colorado Springs area and other bastions of conservatism," she said. "We have several Front Range counties with higher populations, but we need to get out every single Obama voter we can find."

On the Republican side, Milhoan expressed gratitude for a core of volunteers, but sounded less than confident about his party's chances next week.

"It's going to be hard for us to win, but things are tough for Republicans everywhere else," he said. "Our goal is to win as many seats as we can, from the County Commissioner race to the presidential race and everything in between, and we're working really diligently on it."

Milhoan said shifting demographics and voter registration drives have placed Republicans at a disadvantage.

"The Democrats may have a new advantage in immigrants and newly-registered Democrats including felons and so forth," he said. "I don't mean to be flip about that, but some of the statistics and investigations I've heard are troubling ... I think the landscape of the west has been changing for a while, with more people moving in from the east coast and California, who bring their own ideas on what politics should be like."

From this vantage point it appears Obama's ground game in Colorado has lived up to the hype, with ardent McCain backers ratcheting down expectations.

And if Balz was right -- that Colorado is a case study for battleground states -- a few more toss-up states may follow the light-blue trend, with the ground game tipping the electoral scales in the 11th hour.


November surprise?

Mark Twain famously said there are three kinds of lies:  lies, damned lies, and statistics. The McCain campaign is keeping its collective fingers crossed that polling data falls into one of those categories.

John McCain appeared on "Meet the Press" last weekend, and spent about a third of his time fending off poll numbers hurled by Tom Brokaw. He argued polls always show him farther behind than he actually is; the numbers are "all over the map," and the election hinges on voter turnout.

And he may have a point, said Joe Lenski, co-founder of Edison Media Research, which conducts exit polls and election projections for the Associated Press, CNN, Fox, ABC, NBC and CBS.

"The one thing that makes this election tricky to predict is that it looks like voter turnout will be higher," he said. "Polls are based on predictive models of who will or will not vote, so the numbers used may not be accurate. We saw big spikes in voter registration and turnout for primaries in many states, and that's why so many pre-election polls weren't as accurate."

Denver-based political analyst Floyd Ciruli agreed the election was more difficult to project because of questions on voter turnout.

"The pollsters are struggling this year because it appears there will be an expanded electorate with a lot of new voters, so there's more variability in surveys," he said. "We're dealing with an electorate that looks different, so it's hard to use the old models because there are simply a lot of new voters in the system. We're expecting a record turnout of African-Americans, historic turnouts of people under 30, as well as a massive Hispanic vote, and many of these groups are tough to survey."


Wild cards and missing the mark

Voter turnout on Election Day is just one variable that makes the political prediction business an inexact science. Early voting, cell phones and the "Bradley effect" are three other curve balls that could shake things up a bit.

"The big issue in Colorado is what looks like continuing growth in early voters," Lenski said. "It could be that over half the votes are cast by Election Day, and that makes things tricky for any pollster, because it adds to the questions you need to ask. The typical question is who someone would vote for if the election was held today, but if you're asking a week after someone already mailed in a ballot, it means something else."

According to David Flaherty of Magellan Data, nearly 25 percent of registered Republicans and Democrats in Colorado and about 15 percent of unaffiliated voters in Colorado had already voted as of October 24. Early reports in most states find early voters favoring Obama by roughly a 60 - 40 margin.

Lenski added that opening voting precincts earlier has made campaigning more interesting, because candidates no longer flock to key states on Election Day, but make the rounds to battleground states that have started early voting.

The next variable in the polling mix are voters who don't have land lines, which, according to the experts, could make the difference of a couple valuable percentage points.

Lenski said his research from 2004 showed six percent of voters didn't have a land line, and this year should triple that mark, with 15 to 20 percent of active voters who only own a cell phone, and may not be included in many polling surveys.

"On the national level, several polls include cell phone users, like the New York Times, Gallup, and most Pew (Research) polls," he said, arguing polls which excluded cell-only voters would miss the mark. "This year, for the 18 to 29 year-old voting bloc, it may be 30 percent or more (who only own a cell phone)."

Lenski and Ciruli both said this was significant because in previous elections, cell-only voters generally followed the same voting patterns as the rest of the population. The most recent evidence suggests that won't be the case this year.

"We used to have this theory that you could figure out the cell-only voters by using the land line figures," Ciruli said. "We're finding that's not going to get it done this time, because you're underestimating the Obama vote by a percentage point or two."

The final factor is the so-called "Bradley effect," named for a 1982 Governor's race in California in which voting booth racism was blamed for Tom Bradley's loss.

Most political commentators have laid this argument to rest in recent weeks, including Bradley's own pollster who said race wasn't a factor in Bradley's defeat, which instead came from flawed polling methods that excluded a good chunk of the rural vote. American culture has also changed a great deal since the early '80s, a time when some people openly and casually questioned the logic of starting a black quarterback in the NFL. The most convincing argument was the Democratic primary race, which actually found Obama getting more votes than polls projected -- a sort of reverse Bradley effect.

"In general, what you see is what you're going to get," Ciruli said. "There's no secret racial vote, and most polls aren't off much beyond the margin of error ... Colorado seems to be following the national trend, where Obama's up by about five points, and beyond the margin of error. Obviously McCain's not giving up, but Obama's gaining momentum here just as he is nationally."

So despite uncertainty swirling around the ground game, new voters, early voting, cell phones and latent racism, mainstream media outlets seem justified in converting Colorado from a toss-up battleground state to one that favors the Democrats. More strikingly, it appears that if the polls are inaccurate, it's because they underestimate Obama's support.

And if Colorado is a model for other battleground states in terms of voter canvassing and advertising resources -- which, absent some external catalyzing event, are the only potential game-changers left -- what seemed like a nail-biter just a few weeks ago could turn into an electoral landslide.

"There's a fine line between clever and stupid."
--Nigel, Spinal Tap




From a strategic perspective, I love the idea.

Yesterday, McCain said he'll bring Ayers up in the debate. Oh yeah? Bring it, old man -- I'll fire the first shot and force you to play defense.

Obama is best served by being as upfront as possible. What's there to hide? Ayers was man of the year in Chicago in 1997 and worked on a foundation with ties to Reagan. If you're discussing education reform in Chicago, it's necessary to include Bill Ayers -- the guy was working with the Mayor, for crying out loud.

That's it.

After that, McCain wouldn't touch the issue because it would require him to stand in front of Obama and indict his patriotism on national television. His campaign and vice president have far fewer problems sullying his straight-shootin' rep than he does.

There's an 800 pound gorilla in the room, and with McCain tipping his hand as to his intentions to point it out, Obama needs to go on the offensive because he has nothing to hide.

Obama should bring up Ayers.

After that, it's a good 80 or 85 minutes of issues on which Obama finally has home court advantage. If Obama takes a stand tomorrow night, it could go down as the most memorable moment of what has so far been a forgettable series of debates.

“I’ve always admired your tart honesty and ability to be personally offended by broad social trends.”
--Principal Seymour Skinner

There are a few conventions in politics I don’t particularly care for. This goes beyond complaints about the inanity of the electoral college. No, these are things that we seem to take for granted, and digest with the glee of baby birds being fed regurgitated worms.

What follows is a brief and spirited Andy Rooney-like rant of three or four loosely related ideas, and I try to pull a rabbit out of my cornhole in the final paragraphs to make the sucker congeal…so with that caveat, I’m gonna get my rant on:

1.  “Left” for Democrats and “Right” for Republicans.
Now I realize some French history majors out there will point out that the “liberal left” origin was from capitalists sitting on the left and nobles sitting on the right of the king, and the “right” sought to maintain social order, while the “left” became associated with change. (In all fairness, though, if you defend this “left” v. “right” order, you’re siding with the French — which makes me want to choke on my Freedom Fries).

The Tartan, an online site I’d never heard of until three minutes ago, makes the argument that “In virtually every human language, the terms for left-handedness and the direction left have negative connotations.” It goes on to say our English “left” is derived from “lyft,” meaning “weak” or “broken.” In Latin, it’s close to “sinister;” German, “awkward,” and “clumsy” fit the bill.

“Right,” of course, is a synonym for “correct,” and right-handed people comprise about 90% of the population — it’s mainstream, accepted.

To be honest, I didn’t think about this until CNN emblazoned those distracting pundit meters that flanked the presidential candidates, force-feeding the public what Alex Castellanos and Gloria Borger thought were good arguments: these red/blue pie charts had the Dems on the right in blue, and the GOP on the left.

It’s a subtle, almost subconscious, built-in advantage that serves no purpose beyond journalistic shorthand…and burnishing the Frenchies.


2.  “Swift Boating”
Somehow this phrase seems destined to describe absolutely anything and everything resembling an attack ad, the same way “-Gate” is the suffix for nearly every political scandal in the last thirty years.

When did we decide this?

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were a pack of degenerate liars. Is that really too hard to say? They converted a decorated war veteran to a more “fabulous” pansy than Richard Simmons. None of it was true, of course, but for some reason we’ve adopted the phrase “Swift Boat” for any character-based attack, regardless of its veracity.
 “Swift Boat” is a convenient euphemism implying partisanship; if it’s a lie, call it that.



3. “Liberal media bias”
Stephen Colbert nailed my central premise here:  “Reality has a well-known liberal bias.”

From local politics up to the national level, the GOP tries to intimidate media outlets through bullish charges of partisanship and bias. They do it often enough that it’s become an accepted part of the narrative.

Never mind Fox News, which actually got caught — though not surprisingly — using
talking points sent directly from the White House. Fox doesn’t count.

No, it’s a conspiracy of those left-lusting media anchors and writers who are to blame for McBush’s mumbled message. It may not be possible to prove a negative — that aliens don’t exist, or that Obama doesn’t pal around with terrorists — but that doesn’t prevent people from claiming the media is “covering up” connections (like any reporter or anchor wouldn’t LOVE to break that story), or they aren’t digging hard enough.

In debate, one of the first things you learn is an argument is a claim, followed by a
warrant.

It’s absurd to continue to take claims of bias at face value when they aren’t backed by any specific reasoning: that’s a toddler-ish rant, not a cogent argument.


4.  Huh?
By now you may be saying, “what the hell was the point of this scattershot writing?”

Well-played.

I guess I needed something to complain about because it didn’t snow last night, as was expected. Everyone said it was going to happen, and the timing seemed about right.

That’s kind of the same thing that struck the McCain campaign. He’s a perfect fit for our traditional idea of who should inhabit the Oval Office, and the timing seemed about right. It was expected and projected, but not delivered.

When disappointment reigns, you want to complain about something, even if it doesn’t quite fit.

No snow? Hell, I’ll complain about politics!

No presidency? Hell, I’ll cry about media coverage!

The answer for both McCain and I, of course, is to get to work before the big deadline, and do something a little more productive and focused with our time. Nobody wants to listen to a confused messenger…but don’t worry, Mr. Rooney, I’ll still tune in to 60 Minutes tonight.



 

It’s over.

McCain has officially blown his two best chances on the national stage to reverse the tide, the first in a foreign policy draw, the second just hours ago in what was supposed to be his home court.

My immediate reaction was Obama won. After giving it a little thought, and piecing together moments from the debate, it was a beatdown of historic proportions. This was our equivalent of the Nixon-Kennedy debate that found Kennedy collected and Nixon drenched in flop sweat.

Americans love theater, and this doomed McCain tonight. He may have thrived in town hall settings in the past, but the format doesn’t translate as well on a nationally televised broadcast. It’s an absurd yardstick to measure a debate by — instead than policy — but for people who remain “undecided” about two candidates with such stark policy contrasts, political theater matters.

Neither candidate broke any new ground, which is a win for the frontrunner.

Tonight, Obama looked and sounded presidential. After the first few minutes, he seemed even more relaxed and confident than McCain. Rhetorically there was no comparison:  Obama had a forceful, convincing delivery while McCain sounded like he was whispering conspiratorially to his “friends.”

McCain didn’t do himself any favors in the debate, between his ill-advised “That one” comment, to his humorless attempt at a hair transplant joke, to his mantra of “my friends,” which came close to rivaling Giuliani’s 9/11 verbal crutch.

McCain was supposed to dominate the foreign policy debate.  He didn’t.
McCain was supposed to thrive in the town hall debate format. He lost.
McCain was supposed to be the steady, experienced leader with the ability to guide a nation through a difficult time, but his actions over the last few weeks have caused conservative commentators like George Will to wonder aloud if he’s fit for office.

The economy is in the tank, and most economists don’t predict things to get better until early 2009. This, coupled with the fact that McCain blew it on his two best chances to publicly demonstrate his singular ability to lead, makes a McCain presidency less likely each day. Polls show — and McCain aides admit — that Obama wins if the economy is the top concern for voters.

Nothing in the next 26 days will change people’s mind about the economy. And there aren’t many more chances for McCain to discover a message that resonates.

Before the debate, the idea was that we’d get to see Sarah Palin without the filter. I’m assuming by “filter,” they meant “Couric.” While Palin exceeded expectations of most people, who may have expected more of the Tina Fey caricature to appear onstage Thursday night, she did so through some heavy-handed acting. I wondered if she really was talking like people from Alaska, or at least from Wasilla. This morning I decided to watch the 2006 Alaskan governor debate, and what I saw was a Sarah Palin who was decidedly more in her element, answered questions more directly, and was an absolutely credible candidate for the position. I think The Daily Show nailed a tic of Palin’s, which is to “act more adorable” when cornered for an answer. In 2006, a debate that also lasted around 90 minutes, Palin’s invented “Fargo” character was nowhere to be found. She didn’t have a sing-song delivery, spoke in even tones, didn’t have a shred of “Joe six-pack” in her, and came across as someone who understood the fundamental issues facing Alaska, as any governor should. She was someone to be taken seriously. The character that showed up in St. Louis last night didn’t resemble the 2006 Sarah Palin. It was as though her training for the debate consisted of Henry Kissinger in one ear and Frances McDormand in the other. The folksiness was almost unbearable out of the gates: two “darn rights,” two “heckuva’s,” a couple “maverick’s”, a “betcha” and a “bless their heart” in the first half hour. — And not one of them felt authentic. It was foreign to her. It reminded me of a few foreign exchange students, who, in adding English profanity to their vocabulary, spit a cuss word out and emphasize it crisply, instead of letting it roll off and flow naturally. It was like watching Peggy Hill speak her butchered, well-intentioned, quirky version of Spanglish — transparent to most people who speak that language. The 2006 Palin Never. Came. Close…to winking at the camera, or bein’ all folksy with a rash of verbage that would make even Roy “Daggum” Williams say — Hey, you’re over-sellin’ it; go ahead and bring it down a notch. I’ve lived in Kansas for a quarter century, and think I know folksy when I see and hear it: Governor Palin, you’re no Roy Williams. The reason for her character is pretty obvious: There was no way she was going to be able to go toe-to-toe with Biden on straight-up policy. He’s got a few decades of national experience on her, while she’s been cramming for, in her words, “What, about five weeks now?” She employed an old debate trick of turning negative arguments to affirmative arguments by tweaking her case just a bit. In the ’06 debate, she didn’t refer to any conversations with soccer moms, or attempt any other “See-I’m-Just-Like-You” appeals. If she’d been in the spotlight for a year and a half like Obama, I think we would’ve seen someone closer to the 2006 Palin last night. She seems like a relatively quick study, if a bit incurious, and wouldn’t have had to rely on a made-up character to deflect attention from her answers that seemed mostly unrelated to the questions asked. Well-played, Gov’na. We’ve fallen for a Harvard cowboy twice in a row. And this year, you betcha we’re ready for change — and you might just have that faux-folk facade needed to pull it off, doggone it!

I think I’m going to be moving to Canada within the next year or so.

Some of that probably is based on my innate desire as a Hispanic to migrate to the north.

But seriously – if McCain wins in November, I don’t think I can handle another four years of GOP rule. I’m utterly sick of the transparent bullshit.

If the way McCain has run his campaign is any indication of how he’ll head his administration, we’re fucking doomed. The man hasn’t held a press conference in 40 days, while Palin has managed to avoid any questions — outside of Chucky Gibson and Fanboy Hannity — for almost four weeks. If she can’t handle a press conference, she has absolutely zero business in the Oval Office. What we can judge her by, then, are her actions...and those are a little suspect, in refusing to release about 1,100 emails regarding the Trooper probe. Didn’t we just go through this executive privilege claptrap a couple years ago with the whole Rove / Libby debacle?

It’s astonishing and disheartening to think that John McCain, who just eight years ago, may have been a decent nominee for president, has turned into someone who will do or say damn near anything to get elected. It speaks volumes that the harshest interview he’s faced has come from those geriatric vultures on The View. Say what you will about Obama, at least he faced (and ran circles around) Bill O’Reilly. Think there’s any chance someone like Keith Olbermann could get within 50 feet of McPain?

Even more staggering is that we could have half the voting public honestly believe McCain knows his stuff better than Obama. Forget about that whole Iraq-Pakistan border gaffe — he just instinctively KNOWS foreign policy! Forget that McCain’s top advisors have links to the embattled mortgage giants, or that he claimed to “not know as much” as he should about the economy — Obama’s gonna raise your taxes!  

But the real reason I’m so opposed to the idea of a McCain presidency is that he will be the oldest president elected to office. He has battled skin cancer four times, and both his father and grandfather died at a younger age than he is now.

This means one thing:  President Palin.

This is a person who thinks drilling for oil is a “mission from God.” She is redefining “Christian” to only mean “born again Christian.” Her answers to Gibson’s softballs on foreign policy were as shallow as a puddle of puppy pee.

I even endured part of Hannity’s interview — a glorified suck and fuck — and she still kept uttering the same canned horseshit that makes you wonder if she even knows what the hell’s coming out of her mouth. I swear, if she says “stringent oversight,” or “change business as usual,” once more, I’m heading straight for the goddamn border.

When she actually does get into specifics, she contradicts herself in such a way that even the most unseasoned high school open debater would call her on it:  “I’m in favor of economic regulations,” followed by a “Oh yeah, and I want to get government out of our lives.”

Come again?

The absolute disrespect by the McCain campaign for our intelligence as sentient fucking beings is unconscionable.

They’ve tried to brand him as the candidate of “real” change, and say they’re going to “clean up Washington,” when homeboy has spent the last three decades in the corridors of D.C.

Maybe it’s just me, but it doesn’t feel like change when one party has held an advantage on the Supreme Court, has had a rubber-stamp Congress for the better part of eight years, and the O.G. Maverick, Bush, occupying the White House, with whom McCain has sided more than 90 percent of the time.

And the worst part is, their plan is working. They may just be able to keep this shallow enough that a good chunk of Middle America will once again fall for the same scare tactics and vote against their own interests, and wonder what the hell happened four years from now.

 If that’s the case, I’ll probably be somewhere in Canada...or maybe a little island off the Florida coast (not Cuba).

I’ve put up with enough lies, enough deception, and enough double-speak for an entire lifetime. Obama may not bring the full change he so eloquently talks about, but I for one am ready for a president who doesn’t embarrass me when he speaks, and one who actually talks to me like an adult.

And I’m starting to doubt that will happen anytime soon in this country because whether we’re failing as concerned citizens or as journalists, it may be that on the whole, we’re a hell of a lot dumber than Obama gives us credit for...so maybe we deserve McCain after all.

All I know is that my landlord should be watching TV on November 4.

The Palin game More than a week after the announcement of Gov. Sarah Palin as the GOP nominee for Vice-President, the strategy has become pretty clear.

Keep her away from the media as long as possible. Sequester her like she’s a juror on the O.J. trial, and don’t let her say anything off-the-cuff. Right now the media are doing McCain’s job of actually vetting the Alaskan governor, so it makes sense to keep her quiet until the dust settles.

This accomplishes a few things: first, it facilitates the Republican strategy of playing “victim” of the media. They get to retread transparent accusations of sexism, and stick to the talking point of “executive experience,” while the media — merely doing its job — asks some pretty reasonable questions about her experience, and the McCain campaign accuses them of “ganging up” on her. It can look one-sided.

How dare the media belittle the myriad accomplishments of Gov. Palin! She’s a mother of five who can balance the budget while blasting a 12-gauge and selling a jet on eBay!

Second, it makes sense to keep her quiet while the national media unearths potentially shady stories. The cornucopia of scandals and suspect statements she’s accumulated in her 18 months as governor are pretty wide-ranging, and it makes little sense for the McCain campaign to expose her to damaging questions before coaching her on the appropriate response.

Had Palin been available from the beginning, it would have been interesting to watch her answer questions about her ever-changing stance on the bridge to nowhere, her husband’s involvement in a party promoting Alaskan secession, her slashing state funding for special needs children by more than 60 percent while claiming to “fight” for them in her acceptance speech, her apparent ease with banning books from libraries, opposition to abortion in cases of rape and incest, and that little brouhaha called Troopergate.

Now, with less than two months before the election, the media has quite a bit of ground to cover, and things will get muddy.

Do they try and delve into her foreign policy opinions? Do they try to pin her down on a few of the beyond-the-pale social positions?

My guess is that they’ll continue to talk about Troopergate and Republicans will try to continue banter about Bristol Palin’s pregnancy, to polish up the “victim” image. In the meantime, if Palin plays her cards right, voters will become weary of these supposed scandals, and she’ll be able to pull off the ultimate goal of the McCain campaign: To keep her responses on controversial issues vague enough to sound reasonable.

Because if she looks reasonable and sounds reasonable —which she should, as long as the McCain campaign continues to control the message —the media will be as obsessed with her field dressing a moose as they are burnishing McCain’s maverick image.

And that’s when they will have succeeded in changing Palin’s image from one approximating a manipulative, deeply partisan Kathleen Harris, to a benevolent, independent-minded version of Frances McDormand from Fargo.

Sadly, the mainstream media is just shallow (or busy) enough, and the GOP just crafty enough to make her nomination about image, not issues. And that’s what the Democrats need to combat — to show that behind the swash-buckling image and easy smile resides a wolf in sheep’s skin. If they don’t, Palin will be able to superficially relate to enough Reagan Democrats to make the race much closer than it should be.


Note: This was written before I saw “Sarah Palin: An American Woman” on Fox. For some reason, it seems a little soft...she seems almost...human. I’d better turn the channel before her appeal that, “We don’t have to agree on everything,” begins to cling like the worst kind of dingleberry.

Coming up next – is Sarah Palin totally awesome or completely awesome? We report the hard facts and let you decide!

Early in the morning, you gather the family to attend worship services. You put on your best attire, hop in the car and head down the road.

Approaching an intersection, a pair of fatigue-clad individuals armed with automatic rifles signal you to stop. They size you up, ask a few questions with a foreign accent, and finally wave you past. But not before handing you a coin.

Unfortunately, this coin has no monetary value.

One side reads “Where Will You Spend Eternity?” The other side quotes John 3:16.

No, this isn’t a case of overly aggressive Jehovah’s Witnesses terrorizing the townies. It happened in Iraq.

As the McClatchy papers reported, “The U.S. military has confirmed that a Marine in Fallujah passed out coins with a Gospel verse on them to Sunni Muslims.” The Marine was removed from duty and reassigned, and the incident is currently being investigated.

Naturally, McClatchy continued, the act angered many residents who were already displeased with the US “occupiers,” who felt that the troops were now becoming “Christian missionaries.”

This isn’t good.

In no way should this be construed as a commentary on the armed forces, or even the Iraq war itself. Candidly, a college buddy was a Marine involved in the fierce early battles in Fallujah.

No, what matters here is that this Marine was an ambassador of the United States who interacted with everyday civilians.

That this happened at a military checkpoint and not a street corner is disturbing because it is the apotheosis of a “captive audience.” If someone proselytizes in an open street, you generally have the option of “tuning him out” and ambling past. You don’t have that luxury at a mandatory stop.

For now, we’ll assume it was one individual behind the engraved religious coin operation. (I may revisit the issue with a “conshpeeerashy” angle after fashioning my tin foil hat). The point is this:

Dispensing oppositional religious coins at military checkpoints was at best a misguided altruistic act, and hopefully a limited one as well. But the damage to the image and credibility of the U.S. as a “hands-off” peacekeeping force is disconcerting to any reasonable observer.

Yet here the McClatchey story is, on page A16.

Al-Qaeda’s PR wing could not have fabricated a better anecdote. This is precisely the type of catalyzing event that generates interest in the Insurgency.

Many Americans are proud of their religious tradition, and hold it dearly. But even the math (five times a day versus once a week) lends credence to the suggestion that religion plays just as large a role, if not more so, in the daily lives of many Iraqis.

My hunch is many Americans would not view Jehovah’s Witnesses in the same light if they were suddenly armed while making their conversion pitch. If, after more than five years of daily interaction, they leaned into car windows with a finger on a trigger while making a religious pitch, some people might become resentful. On the other side of the coin and on the other side of the globe, we have a lone U.S. soldier clouding his assigned mission with actions more fit for a Christian soldier during the Crusades. Let’s just hope that the residents of Fallujah are not as predisposed to violence as a solution as we seem to be.

Stories like these on page A16 go a long way in explaining why the stories on page A1 read the way they do.

“Obama said what?  Why would he say something like that?”

Now I’m bitter.

The last few election cycles have illuminated and exacerbated political gaffes like never before.  In the past, politicians were able to speak more freely in closed-door fundraisers, assured that their comments would only fall upon favorable ears.

It seems that the “Macaca” incident may have only been the first of many YouTube blunders in American politics.  Had George Allen’s comment been reported in print or relayed second-hand, it would have quickly evaporated into the ether.  But in the instant-gratification era of YouTube politics, his invective reigns in perpetuity and – with a click of the mouse - shadows his legacy.

YouTube offers the (voting) public an entirely new source of information:  politicians unfiltered through the lens of the journalist-as-middleman.  With unambiguous clarity, the nuances and context of an event resonate with greater immediacy and intimacy.  Everyone now has the opportunity to personally evaluate tone, delivery, facial expressions, and crowd response.  And this is why Allen’s racially-charged comments clung to his candidacy:  they were not fleeting, but deliberately delivered, staring directly at the camera, before mockingly remarking, “Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia,” which in a sense removed any confusion about his intent.

Fast-forward to the current kerfuffle over Obama’s “bitter” comment.  In less than 48 hours, a search for “Obama Bitter” on YouTube yields 482 videos—or a new one every six minutes--which have collectively been viewed millions of times.  Naturally, many videos have been edited to either increase or reduce context, depending on the political proclivities of the person uploading the feed.

It is here that many mainstream media outlets have shirked responsibility.  Most television stations may play a sound bite of a sentence or two, and close with the remark that the “bitter” comment could hurt Obama’s election hopes.  Politico’s Carrie Brown has an article entitled “Barack Obama’s Flip Side Revealed,” a moniker better suited for the checkout aisle of a grocery store rather than a respected site of political information.  Even the renowned commentator George Will devoted an article to what he terms “Obama’s Bitter Liberalism.”   

The problem is not that members of the media are reporting the issue, but rather the lackadaisical and pedestrian method in which it is discussed.  Journalists try to deliver “the truth and nothing but the truth so help them, God,” but neglect the all-important “full truth,” which begs the question:  

Do we even concern ourselves with providing context anymore?

It seems that the emphasis on sharpening a good “news peg,” against a deadline has dulled our collective sensibility and responsibility as journalists.  We report the headline or the sound bite, and it is looped ad nauseam rather than opening the door for a more in-depth discussion.

The infamous line from Obama’s fundraising speech in San Francisco that appears in nearly every article is, “It is not surprising then they get bitter.”  Unfortunately, almost across the board, there is little explanation of the word “then” in the sentence.  “Then” signifies the extension of a previous line of thought.  To wit, Obama discussed the problems of a stagnant economy and decades of broken promises at length, before offering the afterthought that “it’s not surprising then they get bitter.”  

Certainly, some of the more responsible political commentators have bothered to do their homework and investigate the context of Obama’s utterance.  But far too many are content to target the easy story, the headline, the sound bite—and in doing so, boldly flirt with journalistic negligence.

In an era where technology enhances convenience, pajama-clad bloggers and anonymous message board users amplify the shortcomings (spurred by budget cuts) of traditional media outlets.  An arm’s-length detachment from the process of newsmaking often allows for a more “meta” or nuanced interpretation of both the event, and the reporting of the event.  Traditional avenues for disseminating information have changed, and with YouTube and online press releases, the playing field has leveled for credentialed and non-credentialed members of the media.  

What many people are coming to realize is that this leveling of the journalistic playing field has resulted in bloggers getting the story “right” at a pace that rivals—and even eclipses—that of more traditional outlets.  The challenge for established media, simply put, is to “step its game up.”  It no longer suffices to parrot back the headline from a press release.  It is no longer acceptable to target the easy story instead of the thoughtful one.  You can still get a “passing” grade for handing in such “work” by the end of the day – but it translates into readers and viewers “passing” by your work to get to the heart of the matter.  What is at stake is no less than the survival of news media as we know it today.

With the “Macaca” gaffe in 2006, bloggers created such a cacophony that mainstream media was essentially coerced into reporting the event.    With increasing budget cutbacks, members of the traditional press would do themselves a favor by reducing their recalcitrance against mining non-traditional sources of information.

By digging a little deeper, visiting YouTube, or reading a blog or two, many mainstream political pundits could have gotten the full story behind Obama’s “bitter” comment correct on the first draft.  If Obama’s supposed gaffe did have overtones of being “out of touch,” those overtones unfortunately characterize those reporting the event.    

It is not surprising, then that I am bitter.