Americans certainly weren’t alone in their eagerness to see George Bush pack his bags for Texas. Bush got a farewell lashing in editorial sections around the globe this week, while President Obama was welcomed by adoring front-page headlines. The cover of London’s The Daily Telegraph even offered a “Free Barack Obama DVD.”

As Hendrik Hertzberg speculates, Obama owes some of his soaring popularity among Americans—a recent poll puts his approval rating at eighty-two percent—to their equally robust distaste for Bush. The same could safely be assumed about worldwide esteem for Obama, but as Gary Younge points out in The Nation, global excitement about the recent election goes much deeper, particularly when you consider race.

“For most of the last century,” Younge writes, “progressives and the oppressed around the world have looked to black America as a beacon—the redemptive force that stood in permanent dissidence against racism at home and imperialism abroad.” Younge explains that African-American artists and sports stars have long been inspirational icons for “oppressed minorities” around the world. Lately, however, “black America's most globally prominent faces were singing and rapping about getting rich.” Obama’s election ushered in a new era of possibility, and represented to the world, just as it did to Americans, real triumph over oppression. It also signals an important racial shift, according to Younge:

The rest of the world must become comfortable with a black American, not as a symbol of protest but of power. And not of any power but a superpower, albeit a broken and declining one. A black man with more power than they. How that will translate into the different political cultures around the globe, whom it will inspire, how it will inspire them and what difference that inspiration will make will vary.

The world is watching as Obama gets down to work, and not just for inspiration—they’re also expecting results. The New Stateman devoted much of a recent issue to analyzing what the world wants from Obama and how likely he is to deliver. Don’t worry, Mr. President, you “only [have] to rescue the global economy, solve the crisis in the Middle East and fix the environment.”

Image by Muhammad Adnan Asim, licensed under Creative Commons.

Now that the U.S. presidential contest is finally over, GOOD magazine suggests that people turn their attentions to six particularly interesting elections that will take place around the world in the coming year.

First up is Israel’s parliamentary election, which may be delayed due to the current conflict in Gaza. The top two contenders are Benjamin Netanyahu and Tzipi Livni; Netanyahu currently leads in the polls, but Livni has experience as the current Foreign Minister and a reputation of being untouched by corruption.

Other contests to follow include India’s parliamentary election in May and Iran’s presidential election in June.

Caroline Kennedy made her interest in filling Hillary Clinton's senate seat official this week. While her uncle Teddy is keen on the idea, the dynastic nature of her bid has provoked a resounding backlash in the blogosphere. Among the anti-Caroline offensives being mounted online is this: Caroline Kennedy is less qualified for the Senate than Sarah Palin was for the White House.

Ouch, that's gotta hurt. But is it true?

After confessing, “I’d never thought I'd write this sentence,” Noam Scheiber of the New Republic goes out a limb, asserting, “Palin is vastly more qualified than Kennedy,” even considering the higher office Palin sought. Rod Dreher of the Crunchy Con blog seconds Scheiber's thoughts, adding that “anyone endorsing the Camelot princess for the US Senate owes Sarah Palin a huge apology.”

In a back-and-forth with the ladies of Slate's XX Factor blog, Emily Yoffe takes a different angle on the same point: “However ill-prepared Palin was for the vice presidency, she was chosen because she got elected governor of Alaska. And she did that without money, connections, or a famous name.” Yoffe argues that Kennedy’s appointment would reinforce the have and have-not dichotomy that rules our society. Many have-nots “think there's no point making an effort because everything is already wired for the haves,” writes Yoffe. Kennedy's appointment could help fortify that barrier to upward mobility.

Kennedy’s defenders in the Caroline vs. Sarah debate are likely to make an argument similar to this one by commenter elaine1, posted in response to a Politico story: “Don't compare Caroline Kennedy to Sarah Palin. Caroline is intelligent, savvy, and dignified.” Also standing up for Kennedy is Bernie Quigley on The Hill’s Pundits blog, who contends that Kennedy has shown “true and natural leadership” and that her experience as a mother, lawyer, and philanthropist “is the kind of varied experience the Senate calls for.”

If Kennedy does score the appointment, it won't be just because she has a famous name, but because her particular famous name is one Americans have a uniquely persistent, romantic fascination with. Ruth Marcus, in a recent column for the Washington Post, effusively (and without a hint of irony) sums up that sentiment: "[W]hat a fitting coda to this modern fairy tale to have the little princess grow up to be a senator."

Years of anti-science politics haven’t just repressed controversial scientific findings; the approach has stopped controversial topics from being researched in the first place, according to research by Rutgers professor Joanna Kempner. Facing protests from lawmakers, institutions, and taxpayers, Kempner found that researchers have opted to change or eliminate divisive words (for example, “AIDS research,” “abortion,” or “homosexuality”) from their proposals, replacing them with benign euphemisms or leaving them out altogether. Kempner calls attention to the “chilling effect” that these controversies have, meaning that scientists will be less inclined to study a certain area in the future if it means uphill battles for funding.

It’s difficult to tell how much these issues have already affected research, since government databases do not show original versions of altered documents. According to Kempner, “Congressional oversight has, in this case, had the unintended consequence of making science less transparent.” This “chilling effect” hasn’t stopped all scientists, though. Kempner writes that “some scientists shy away from controversial research areas, while others relish the opportunity to defend their ideological positions.”

As part of Barack Obama's promise to increase transparency in government, his Change.gov site has announced “Your Seat at the Table,” a page where users can read every policy document resulting from the transition team’s official meetings with other organizations. Readers also have the opportunity to leave comments or post their own material, all of which gets reviewed by the team.

Here’s Michael Strautmanis, public liaison and intergovernmental affairs director of the transition team, describing the site:

Zoinks! Until recently, it’s been all too easy to dismiss cryptographic voting technology—i.e. systems where voters reveal hidden codes that enable them to confirm their votes—as a wonky pipe dream, reports Technology Review. But now, there’s a new system designed to work with the optical ballot-counting scanners already in use.

This is how it works: I go to my neighborhood polling place and fill out a ballot per usual. But I use a special pen, which reveals a secret code inside of any bubble I mark. I think, “Damn. This is just like something Q would’ve dreamed up for James Bond.” My ballot has a number, so I make a note of these codes for myself—and then later, go online and make sure that my ballot number and confidential codes match up. Voila!

Imagine what such a system would have done in Minnesota, where the Norm Coleman vs. Al Franken Senate race recount, flush with contested ballots, is still pending a month after votes were cast. Minnesota Public Radio has been posting a sample of the contested ballots online; some of the votes seem so clearly intended for a particular candidate that it’s left me wondering just how many mistakes do slip through. With a cryptographic system, voters could be their own election judges.

Forget the culture war, Ann Friedman argues in the latest issue of the American Prospect. Gay rights are a civil-rights issue. And that means the fight can’t wait around for culture to catch up.

The proof came on November 4th. Amidst hosannas from progressives celebrating Barack Obama’s victory, four state ballot initiatives successfully blasted gay rights in California, Florida, Arizona, and Arkansas.

In the wake of those votes, Friedman launches an eloquent call to action: 

Culture changes slowly. This is something I've heard a lot in the wake of the passage of California's Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage. "History is on our side! Don't worry, the demographic trends are with us!"

I'm sorry, but that's just not good enough. These are the kind of conciliatory comments that go part and parcel with the culture-war frame. Civil-rights era activists knew history was on their side. But their goal was not to make every white American comfortable with the idea of sharing public spaces and power with people of color. It was to guarantee people of color those rights, regardless of where the culture stood. That's the thing about rights. You have to claim them.

We won't win victories on LGBT rights as long as we see the issue as part of a liberal--versus-conservative war. If we're at war, it's not with conservatives. Our enemy is not James Dobson or Sarah Palin. It is the sadly accepted notion that anti-gay measures are shoo-ins on the ballot, and that same-sex couples just have to sit tight for a decade or two and wait for public opinion to catch up.

A civil-rights frame is not only more proactive -- because it doesn't allow progressives to swaddle themselves in comforting demographic trends -- it is more persuasive. It is also less divisive. The very act of invoking the term "culture war" signals that we think something is controversial, when in fact, equal rights should be the furthest thing from it.

The travel industry and Washington D.C. residents stand to benefit handsomely from Barack Obama’s inauguration. Obama fans are forking over serious cash just to be in the vicinity of the capital on January 20—forget actually attending the ceremony—making the bargains struck on Craigslist to score tickets to his Chicago victory rally look meager by comparison.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, D.C. resident Vanessa Jones rented her basement apartment for $4,100 during inauguration week. It only took about 15 minutes for offers to start pouring into her inbox in response to a Craigslist ad she posted.

One Austin couple has taken it upon themselves to organize the Texas migration to Washington for Obama’s swearing in, coughing up the cash to rent three buses, at a steep $12,000 each, to make the trip. They're looking to fill the buses through a Craigslist ad, reports Austin TV station, KVUE, where they're offering seats for $300 round-trip.

Those bus fares could be cheaper than plane tickets to D.C., which the San Francisco Chronicle reports are about 226 percent pricier than normal fares. Airlines are enjoying a hefty bump in business, with many adding special flights to Dulles to accommodate demand. JetBlue spokeswoman Alison Coyle told the Dallas Morning News, “We added these additional flights because on peak travel days, we are seeing bookings close to double what we would see on a normal day in January.”

How’s that for an economic stimulus?

Now that the election is over, the great scapegoat of ’08, Bill Ayers, has emerged from hiding to embark upon a grand media tour. He made his post-campaign coming-out on Good Morning America, gave speeches in Washington that drew ample coverage in the mainstream press, and has been popping up in countless other news outlets, including Democracy Now! and Salon.

The substance of the Ayers coverage may not warrant the amount of time it consumes. But if there's one Ayers interview actually worth paying attention to, it's the one he gave to Fresh Air host Terry Gross on November 18, according to James Fallows. Fallows says Gross’ interview with Ayers exemplifies how good she is at her job—and how bad so many other professional interviewers are at theirs. Here’s why he thinks Gross is so great:

…[W]hat she shows brilliantly in this interview, is: she listens, and she thinks. In my experience, 99% of the difference between a good interviewer (or a good panel moderator) and a bad one lies in what that person is doing while the interviewee talks. If the interviewer is mainly using that time to move down to the next item on the question list, the result will be terrible. But if the interviewer is listening, then he or she is in position to pick up leads ("Now, that's an intriguing idea, tell us more about..."), to look for interesting tensions ("You used to say X, but now it sounds like..."), to sum up and give shape to what the subject has said ("It sounds as if you're suggesting..."). And, having paid the interviewee the respect of actually listening to the comments, the interviewer is also positioned to ask truly tough questions without having to bluster or insult.

If you have this standard in mind—is the interviewer really listening? and thinking?—you will be shocked to see how rarely broadcast and on-stage figures do very much of either. But listen to this session by Gross to see how the thing should be done.

Image by BlogjamComic, licensed under Creative Commons.

With a new administration coming to town, lobbyists are scrambling about the capital, angling for their piece of the fresh political pie.

There are the usual suspects: labor unions, defense contractors, business associations, and the like. But for all the K-Street power these old-school suits hope to wield, they lack one all-powerful weapon: cute puppies. That fluffy arsenal belongs to the D.C.-area animal shelters that are jostling to meet the Obamas’ canine needs

Barack Obama’s now famous election-night awwww-moment came when he told his girls that they “earned the puppy that is coming with us.” Later, he explained to reporters pursuing this hot story that, though the family wants to go with a shelter dog, the trick is finding one that won’t aggravate Malia’s allergies.

As the Washington Post’s Sleuth blog reports, the city’s shelters have sprung to attention to solve Obama’s problem: “Puppymania has ignited fierce competition among local pet rescue organizations clamoring to be the go-to adoption center for the next first family.”

The Washington Animal Rescue League wrote the president-elect directly with an appeal the day after the election. And the Washington Human Society is touting its “puppy kindergarten classes” for “first family adopters.” 

You can scout for some hypoallergenic contenders here, here, and here.*

*Action unadvised for anyone who actually lives in the D.C. area and is not prepared to be sucked into adopting one of these unbearably cute animals.

Image of  Jiffy  courtesy of the Washington Humane Society. Jiffy is a pit bull terrier mix, so likely not a hypoallergenic contender for the Obamas, but he's damn cute, and thus earned a spot in this post. More about Jiffy: "Jiffy is a happy, confident pup who is tolerant and comfy in his fur and surroundings. He gets along great with other dogs, is responsive to leadership and (especially for his size) walks great on a leash!" 

It turns out that Barack Obama was not fully vetted before he was elected president. Did you know that he collects Conan the Barbarian comics?! Or that he ate dog, snake, and grasshopper when he lived in Indonesia?! These are just two of 50 little-known tidbits revealed in the Telegraph last week.

If the Telegraph’s list leaves you thirsty for still more details on the man—trivial or consequential—don't despair. Just stop by Politico’s newest venture, Politico 44. The site, billed as a “living diary of the Obama presidency,” provides substantive, Obama-centric reporting and allows you to track the president-elect like never before. (In case you were wondering, he left home to workout at 9:37 a.m. Sunday and arrived at his office later that day at precisely 4:03 p.m.)

After 9/11 we heard a lot about the death of irony, but after an initial period of mourning, humor prevailed and even thrived in the troubled early aughts.

But with the departure of the president who gave political satire its all-time easiest target, and the arrival of an unflappable and extremely popular president-elect, will practitioners of political satire run out of fodder?

Of course not. The Daily Show’s ascendancy coincided with Bush’s increasingly disastrous presidency, but Jon Stewart & Co. won’t suddenly be irrelevant just because Bush is. “Assuming the Daily Show can only be funny under someone like George W. Bush gives far too much credit to the outgoing President and is obscenely insulting to the writers of the Daily Show,” writes Matt Tobey on Comedy Central’s blog. “As if there wasn't plenty of failed Bush-based humor from shittier sources than the Daily Show.”

Meanwhile, the South Park boys pulled an all-nighter after the election to complete their extremely timely Wednesday broadcast, in which overzealous acolytes of Barack Obama see his victory as license to riot drunkenly in the streets, and Obama’s campaign team shows its true colors as an upscale band of jewel thieves a la Ocean’s Eleven.

These comedy institutions are bellwethers of the general categories into which Obama Humor will fall, at least for now: Poking fun at the extreme fervor of Obama’s supporters, and pointing up the absurd paranoia of Obama’s opposition (much like the New Yorker did all those months ago.)

The reliable Onion covers those satirical bases and more, with headlines like “International Con Man Barack Obama Leaves U.S. With $85 Million In Campaign Fundraising” and “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job”.

There’s also the hilarious animated video below, from Get Your War On creator David Rees, making the rounds. (Consider it a sequel to the New Yorker cover.)

And when Obama inevitably falls short of the astronomical expectations set for him, satirists will pounce. The Daily Show’s John Hodgman told Politico, “As much as the show is fake news, its soul is very sincere, borne of a desire that everyone shares, that we don’t want to be lied to. If there is a whiff of insincerity [Obama] will be taken to task.”

Barack Obama’s faith was the subject of a lot of analysis on the campaign trail, and many are pondering the effect that his victory will have on religions in America. Jeff Sharlet at the Revealer wonders whether Obama’s election signals the demise of the Religious Right, but some think that reports of the movement’s death are premature. Sharlet quotes conservative scholar D. Michael Lindsay who predicts that an Obama Administration will give the movement something rally against: “Political movements like the Religious Right don’t need a ‘god’ to succeed, but they do need a devil. Nothing builds allegiances among a coalition like a common enemy.”

The Religious Right might make an enemy of Obama, even though he is a Christian, because his faith is moderate and measured, and because he’s prone to seek out different opinions and shun absolutism.

This measured worldview could be why Obama will present a problem the New Atheists, too. As Frank Schaffer wrote for the Huffington Post the day after the election that Obama’s victory is drawing the curtain on an era on spiritual certitude and intolerance at both extremes:

Into the all or nothing culture wars, and the all or nothing wars between the so-called New Atheists and religion the election of President elect Obama reintroduces nuance. President elect Obama’s ability to believe in Jesus, yet question, is going to rescue American religion in general and Christianity in particular, from the extremes.

Pulitzer-winning author Alice Walker has written a brief but beautiful open letter to Barack Obama.

Unlike many letters addressing the President-elect, hers does not caution him to forward an agenda or else. Instead, she begins by absolving Obama of the impossibly high expectations placed on him by some voters. “I would advise you to remember that you did not create the disaster that the world is experiencing, and you alone are not responsible for bringing the world back to balance.”

What he must take responsibility for, she insists, is his own happiness and that of his family. He cannot succeed without remaining a good husband and father, for “it is the soul that must be preserved, if one is to remain a credible leader.”

(Thanks, NewPages.)

Barack Obama's overwhelming win was due in no small part to the millions he raked in via online appeals to supporters. Anyone hoping that his historic victory would end those daily pleas for cash was in for a surprise yesterday, though, when the campaign was back at it, asking for more money. This time the non-tax-deductable contributions go to pay the debts of the Democratic National Committee.

Obama's not alone. The McCain-Palin campaign, for one, still appears to be accepting contributions through JohnMcCain.com. 

In fact, many of the old favorites from the 2008 campaign still have donation appeals live on their websites. That's the case for former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who is still accepting contributions on his HuckPac website, although he’s also now raking in a salary for his show on Fox News. 

Hilary Clinton, too, is taking contributions, a move that could reignite fears that the Clintons will divide the Democratic party in 2008. Other voices from the Democratic primary, including Chris Dodd, Bill Richardson, and even John Edwards are all still asking for money online from their loyal constituencies.

“America’s Mayor” never gives up either, apparently. On their podcast, John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman warn that a Rudy Giuliani comeback could occur any day now.

On Nov. 4, news outlets from around the world beamed images from Chicago’s Grant Park to captivated audiences awaiting the U.S. election results. Thousands of excited Chicagoans packed the park to hear Barack Obama deliver his first speech as president-elect. Afterward, they spilled out into the streets to celebrate.

In this episode of the UtneCast, we recapture some of the voices and sounds from downtown Chicago the night Barack Obama won the presidency.

You can listen to the interview below, or to subscribe to the UtneCast for free through iTunes, click here.

Though it received little attention in the campaign, technology policy has been on Obama’s presidential agenda for some time.

Almost a year ago, Obama revealed his plan to create a new cabinet position for a Chief Technology Officer, who “will ensure that our government and all its agencies have the right infrastructure, policies, and services for the 21st century,” according to Obama’s new web site, Change.gov. Wired’s speculative laundry list of candidates for the post includes everyone from Google CEO Eric Schmidt to Dr. Evil.

Andrew Rasiej, founder of Personal Democracy Forum and techPresident, tells Information Week that, “If someone of the caliber of Eric Schmidt were to be asked to serve this country in the White House, I think you would see a far quicker adoption of policies that not only help the tech industry but help the tech industry help the country and the world.”

Obama has also pledged steadfast support for net neutrality, digitizing medical records, and expanding broadband access. Information Week calls him the “first presidential candidate to unveil a wide-reaching and in-depth technology agenda.” However, there are potential downsides of an Obama presidency for technology, writes CNet. For instance, “For technology firms, a substantial downside—and one that's difficult to overstate—is how hostile a solidly Democratic Congress and White House could be toward free trade.”

Below the roar of the presidential race and measures on reproductive and same-sex marriage rights, two states approved sweeping changes to marijuana laws on November 4, reports AlterNet.

Michigan voted overwhelmingly to legalize marijuana for medical use, while Massachusetts citizens chose to decriminalize marijuana possession, replacing arrest and possible jail time with a $100 fine.

AlterNet applauds the sensible cost-benefit analysis behind the voters' decisions. The millions of dollars and hundreds of hours the government and the police have committed to arrests, incarceration, and prevention campaigns haven't done much to stymie the drug's use, as seen in statistics gathered by the Bureau of Justice.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, marijuana possession accounted for more than a third of all possession arrests in 2006, and the total number of marijuana-related arrests for that year (829,600) far outnumbers those of heroin/cocaine (582,100).

In light of those numbers, why not take the resources once devoted to processing these minor crimes and instead direct them toward more serious issues like gun crime or drug trafficking?

Michigan is the 13th state to approve the use of medical marijuana, which a number of studies have revealed provides relief from the nausea and pain of several diseases and their treatments.

Image courtesy of  aforero , licensed under  Creative Commons .

Herewith, a smattering of memorable quotes from America’s history-making election.

“America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves—if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made? This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment.”

—President-elect Barack Obama in his victory speech

“I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating [Barack Obama], but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together, to find the necessary compromises, to bridge our differences, and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited. Whatever our differences, we are fellow Americans. And please believe me when I say no association has ever meant more to me than that.” 

—Senator John McCain in his concession speech

“Obama’s gift is that he understood America's great secret, that Americans have a deep and abiding need to love one another, and that we only lack the courage to do so.” 

—Adam Serwer at American Prospect’s Tapped blog

“What I’ve been forced to acknowledge is there has been a shift—it’s not a sea change. But there's been a decided shift in the meaning of race. It’s not an ending. It's a beginning.”

—novelist Kim McLarin, to the Washington Post

“Citizens with eyes, ears, and the ability to wake up and realize what truly matters in the end are also believed to have played a crucial role in Tuesday's election.” 

—the Onion

Obama erweckt das neue Amerika
(Obama wakes up the new America)

—headline from Spiegel.com

“The Civil War is over. Let reconstruction begin.”

—New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman

“If you are incapable of mustering pride in this moment, and if you cannot appreciate how meaningful this day is for millions of black folks who stood in lines for up to seven hours to vote, then your cynicism has become such an encumbrance as to render you all but useless to the liberation movement. Indeed, those who cannot appreciate what has just transpired are so eaten up with nihilistic rage and hopelessness that I cannot but think that they are a waste of carbon, and actively thieving oxygen that could be put to better use by others.”

—Tim Wise at Racialicious

“It really is fun to see those people out there jumping up and down. There’s something about jumping up and down that I think is good for the soul. It’s a universal sign of joy.”

—Fox News anchor Brit Hume, musing at the student crowds that gathered outside the White House on election night

“Good morning, Republicans! Welcome to the wilderness. We saved you a seat right over here, next to us. Looks like we'll have a lot of time to talk in the next four years.”

—libertarian blogger Katherine Mangu-Ward on Reason’s Hit & Run blog.

“[A]s the result of a financial panic that unfairly undermined all Republicans, Obama has stumbled into the most dangerous kind of victory. A mandate for change but not for ideas. A mandate without clear meaning.”

—Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson

“It’s a good to have a president again. The last couple of years we haven’t had one—or rather we have one who decided to give up after failing badly. This has been an especially painful vacuum during the collapse of the economy, and in the face of our diminished reputation in the world. There’s been no one to reassure the country, and no sign that a leader was actually tending to the national well being.”

—New Republic editor Franklin Foer

Did we miss a good one? Add it below in our comments.

Newspapers from across the nation and the world scrambled last night to capture Barack Obama’s historic victory in a few pithy words.

Here’s a domestic sampling from the Columbia Journalism Review’s Campaign Desk.

And the Newseum has headlines from around the United States, from the Chicago Tribune to the Huntsville Times in Alabama (see above). The site also features front pages from the rest of the world, though many international newspapers are still a news cycle behind.

Barack Obama squeaked out an extraordinary electoral victory in Indiana, a state that went red by more than 20 points in 2004 and hasn’t given the nod to a Democratic presidential contender since 1964.

I spent some time Tuesday morning observing the get out the vote effort at the Obama campaign’s office in Schererville, Indiana, in the northwest corner of the state. From what I saw there and at a nearby poll, I’d say the president-elect owes his narrow win in large part to a remarkable volunteer army that gave their time, cell-phone minutes, gas money, and shoe leather to his cause.

Major props to Obama volunteers who helped get people to the polls and kept them there in Indiana and across the country. Some of their small but important efforts on Election Day included:

Using their own cell phones to plow through scads of call sheets for hours on end.

Carting sandwiches, donuts, water, and chips to voters waiting in line at the polls. Stick it out people! We’ll give you a donut! (But can't tell you who the donut’s from while you stand in line.)

Holding voters’ places in line if they had to step out to move their car, which was illegally parked because polling lots were full. (Didn’t witness this, but it was how campaign staffers said they were dealing with a report that police were threatening to tow and ticket cars at one polling place.)

Making a 30 to 45-minute drive from Chicago, where Obama supporters felt their help wasn’t needed, to knock on Hoosier doors and pepper neighborhoods with campaign literature.

Image: An Obama volunteer delivers sandwiches to a nearby polling place.

In the midst of Tuesday’s transformative election, it’s easy to forget that Barack Obama won’t actually be president for another three months. In that time, a lot could happen, much of it at the whim of a person whose name we don’t hear much these days: George W. Bush.

The transition is already in effect. In a phone call to Obama last night the 43rd president effused, “What an awesome night for you... I called to congratulate you and your good bride.” (Good bride? Weird.) He also promised a smooth transition for his successor, inviting Obama and his family “to visit the White House soon, at their convenience.”

On the eve of Election Day, Democracy Now! gained some insight into Bush’s mood from White House Press Secretary Dana Perino, who shrugged off the world’s dislike for her boss, likening the presidency to high school: “Everybody would like to be popular. You can all remember that back in high school. Everyone really wanted to be popular, and some of us just weren’t. But that doesn’t mean that you don’t have principles and values that you stay true to.”

Um... okay, Dana. So Bush is the social pariah who sat by himself in the cafeteria, and got back at us preppies, jocks, and pretty girls by invading Iraq and curtailing our civil liberties? In reality, most of Bush’s decisions seemed driven precisely by political expediency rather than some internal, principled compass; he was too concerned about being popular with his base and his advisers.

With relatively little at stake politically, now is a probable time for Bush to advance his most controversial agendas, like the brazenly unconstitutional move to assign U.S. troops to U.S. soil or last-minute changes to environmental regulations. On Monday the New York Times summarized Bush’s “parting gifts” and predicted “those we fear are yet to come” before January in the realms of civil liberties, environmental protection, and abortion rights.

While we deserve a celebratory grace period in the wake of Obama’s victory and a hopeful honeymoon after he’s inaugurated, we must be especially vigilant in the last days of Bush’s presidency. The end is in sight, but it’s not here yet.

Barack Obama delivered a serious, reflective, and forward-looking acceptance speech to an emotional and relieved audience in Grant Park last night. But when the crowd and many joiners took to Michigan Avenue to celebrate, no one was in the mood for political sobriety.

Revelers mounted the flowerpots dividing one of Chicago’s showcase streets and broke out into spontaneous musical celebrations, dancing with fellow supporters, sharing big smiles, and obsessively snapping photos. 

The scene inside Obama’s ticketed victory party was considerably more subdued, though no less emotional. There were periodic roars as Obama wins rolled in on the jumbotron, and a resounding cry of joy from the crowd when the words “Barack Obama Elected President” flashed triumphantly onto the screen beside Wolf Blitzer. It was, not surprisingly, the emotional climax of the rally and was punctuated with tearful hugs.

The communal spirit of the night was unmistakable, and the sense of mutual respect that flowed between the diverse slices of humanity that descended upon downtown Chicago to fete Obama was really special to be a part of. As we shuffled out of Hutchinson Field in a giant mass after Obama's acceptance speech, a middle-aged white man next to me watched an older black woman who was waving at the crowd and talking to the other partygoers from a small riser. He turned to his wife and said, "Imagine how she must feel after everything she's seen."

Black, white, young, old, it's safe to say the weight of the moment was lost on no one. And Chicago's euphoric spirit didn't fade overnight. As I sit here typing this blog the morning after, Obama cheers and chants are floating up to my third-story window on Chicago Avenue, a couple of miles west of downtown.

Here are some snapshots of election night in Obama's hometown.

Nothing alleviates the anxiety surrounding the fate of the world better than the fresh-faced, not-yet-jaded enthusiasm of youth. A group of 5th-graders from Kipp Stand Academy in Minneapolis (pictured left) provided a welcome distraction to the Utne Reader staff by standing on the corner in front of our building with signs saying, “Vote” and “Honk Once for McCain, Honk Twice for Obama.” For at least a minute or two, these fine children helped us stop pulling our hair out, clutching the sides of our chairs, cracking our knuckles, and refreshing the Pollster.com every few minutes.

Thanks, kids!

As we wait for the polls to close, Lando Calrissian puts this election in perspective as he battles attack ads from Emperor Palpatine: 

(Thanks, Slog.)

Take a break from the news stream and the refresh button. The folks at the Landline are out with a second batch of McCain attack ads inspired by famous directors. David Lynch fans are in for a treat.

Watch the first round here.

(Thanks, Coudal.)

Utne Reader editor in chief David Schimke recently spoke up for the alt press at the Dole Institute of Politics, which has hosted a series of election-related panels this year. Schimke was part of the institute’s latest lively panel, “Media Coverage of Campaign 2008: Magic or Misguided?” Check out video from the media panel here, and browse other Dole Institute videos here.

Need something to take the edge off as you wait for your fellow Americans to decide the fate of the nation? How about a distracting drinking game? (Those who prefer not to imbibe, or want to ensure they’ll be both awake and alert when the next president is announced, can substitute alcohol with stale Halloween candy).

Here are the rules, suggested by experts Bennett Gordon, Elizabeth Ryan, and Kari Volkmann-Carlsen here at Utne Reader. Drink or dig into the Halloween candy every time the following happen, unless another frequency is otherwise noted.

1. A red state goes blue, or vice versa (Potential targets for the former: Ohio, Virginia, Florida, Nevada, Colorado, North Carolina, New Mexico, Indiana. Potential targets for the latter: Pennsylvania, New Hampshire.)

2. A pundit says something he or she actually believes, mistakenly assuming that his or her mic is off (See: Peggy Noonan or the Rev. Jesse Jackson).

3. Drink/pop a Reeses every tenth time Joe the Plumber is mentioned. Anything less could cause alcohol poisoning or a hypoglycemic event.

4. Voter suppression reported. Do not drink or candy-binge for five minutes.

5. Flagrant network abuse of new Election Day gadgetry. Watch this SNL skit for examples:

6. Keith Olberman pounds his chest saying, “What’s up now?”

7. A Fox News anchor starts to cry.

8. A former candidate looks more convincing than he ever did while he was running (i.e., Al Gore, John Kerry, Bill Richardson)

9. James Carville uses folksy expression hitherto unknown to all speakers of English.

10. Network assures you, Joe the Viewer, that they won’t screw up this year by calling any race too early. Then calls a race too early.

11. Hanging chads come up.

12. Network actually mentions the Green Party (drink twice).

13. Obama wins. Stop drinking/eating candy. Go and dance in the street.

14. McCain pulls off upset. Finish off all the bottles in house.

Image by  RichieC , licensed under  Creative Commons . 

Former president Bill Clinton drew some 4,000 people to the Minneapolis convention center last night to stump for Barack Obama and longtime friend Al Franken, who is battling Republican incumbent Norm Coleman in a must-watch U.S. Senate race in Minnesota. Franken has called on both Clintons for support as he vies for the hotly contested seat. A roundup of recent polls shows a four to six point lead in either candidate’s favor according to Talking Points Memo.

Also in the rally lineup were local mayors, Representative Keith Ellison, Senator Amy Klobuchar, and former vice president Walter Mondale. The speakers made repeated cries for door knocking, and reminders to fight complacency in the home stretch, and nearly everyone mentioned grassroots hero and former Senator Paul Wellstone, who occupied Coleman’s seat before he was killed in a plane crash in 2002.

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak drew lots of applause when he briefly diverted from the Franken love fest and encouraged everyone to do what they can to oust Representative Michele Bachmann, who has occasionally thrust Minnesota politics into the spotlight during her term with her fondness for President Bush and more recently, her Hardball appearance—which even led to a call for her to be censured.

Clinton did not disappoint when took command of the hall and praised Franken for running a more serious campaign than his opponent—despite being a comedian. He also stressed that an Obama win wouldn’t be enough without Democratic support in the Senate, but he emoted and sang Obama’s praises as the candidate who can execute and turn “good intentions into real changes.” Then he called for America to do better in this election by taking a quick dig at his successor by saying: “So we gotta pick us a good decider.”

Image by Elizabeth Ryan

From my observation perch in Stanford, California, an English European turned 24/7-cablenews-Webcast junkie, I notice that many Americans still suffer from a touching delusion that this is their election. How curious. Don't they understand? This is our election. The world's election. Our future depends on it, and we live it as intensely as Americans do. All we lack is the vote.

That’s historian Timothy Garton Ash writing in a roundup of election eve observations from the New York Review of Books.

The sentiment is backed up in numbers with this interactive global poll at Foreign Policy, which shows Obama with a commanding lead in world opinion. 

Americans, meanwhile, are heading to the polls with visions of Great Depression II dancing in their heads. Domestic economic woes rule the polls as the top voter issue. And that might give fretters like Ash the feeling that Americans aren’t too worried about views beyond our shores.

Of course, the economic focus is good news for anyone pulling for Obama. But as another note of perhaps premature assurance, I’ll mention one thing that struck me during the presidential debates, though it didn’t register among the punditry at the time. The conventional wisdom is that the Republican ticket owns foreign policy, and if national security—not the economy—were Americans' top concern then people wouldn’t be selling their souls on Craigslist for tickets to Obama’s Grant Park would-be victory rally.

But every time Obama talked about restoring America’s standing in the world during those debates, that little CNN widget tracking independent voters’ sentiments spiked. It may not be the issue in the forefront of voters’ minds, but it’s one they do seem, at long last, to care about.  

Tickets and plus-one privileges to Barack Obama’s election night rally in Chicago’s Grant Park are a hot commodity on Craigslist, even though no tickets have been issued yet. Rally-goers had to sign up for free tickets to the event online and were promptly notified by email that they were either waitlisted or would receive their ticket, with the option to bring one guest. Tickets are supposed to land in in-boxes some time before Tuesday.

Hopeless, waitlisted supporters and opportunistic likely ticket holders have both made their way to Craigslist to hawk and bid on the yet to materialize goods. Some are simply selling the tickets they expect to receive for as much as $400, while others are offering more creative swaps, like these:

“I am offering to bring as my guest to the Obama rally anyone who can offer any sort of real, prospective employment, internship, and/or networking opportunities.”

“Will trade my soul, slightly used with some tarnish, for 2 tickets to the Obama rally.”

“I am willing to trade notre dame football tickets (in the student section which is really fun) for the last two games.”

"Get free ticket when you abandon Christianity or any other faith and become atheist/agnostic ... If you are already atheist/agnostic or if you are not going to abandon your faith please, bid $350+ for the ticket. Proceeds will go to non profit."

Among the singles set, some Craigslist users are hoping ticket-trading will spark a romantic connection:

“Looking for a super hot chick to be my date to the Obama event. I have no problem pulling hot girls in general so since I have Obama tickets you have to be not just hot but like super model hot, or if you look like Eva Longoria.”

Don’t fret nerdy girls, there are Obama men looking for you too:

“I'm looking for a frumpy and/or nerdy girl to go as my +1 to the Obama event. Short girls preferred. Must not be evil … I am average, at best.”

Unlike most of the electorate, some political reporters are not eager to wake up on November 5 with the longest campaign in history a good night’s sleep behind them. “It's kind of like, this is who I am now,” Andrew Romano, a Newsweek blogger, tells the New Republic. “[S]o the idea of the campaign being over and not doing a politics blog is a little bit like, who am I after this election?”

Politico’s Ben Smith shares Romano’s sentiments. “It's so built into my system, that it's going to be hard to stop,” he tells TNR. “It's really pathological.”

But the tight psychological grip campaigns hold on reporters won’t be missed by all those covering the political beat. After the last presidential campaign, CNN correspondent Candy Crowley tells TNR it took her “a good month to stop waking up in the middle of the night in a panic that I've missed something.” Matt Bai of the New York Times notes that some reporters have been on the trail for nearly a year: “There are guys who went out to the primaries in November, December, and thought they'd be done in February or March, and they just never came home.”

Reporter weariness recently caught the critical eye of the Columbia Journalism Review, who took the New York Times to task for what they deemed an instance of lazy campaign coverage. Questioning the relevance of a Times cover story, CJR warns reporters not to “take out their election fatigue on voters.” Just pen a few more good stories, guys, then you can come home and sleep. . .or just keep blogging.

The renewable energy industry is more dependent than ever on the direction of the currently ailing economy. Recent news items from Triple Pundit and New West offer different perspectives on the economic plight of renewable energy.

Triple Pundit states that future investment in renewable energy will create more jobs. TP’s Gina-Marie Cheeseman turns to a Berkeley report on the job-creating potential of the renewable energy industry. “Every $100 million invested in the renewable sector creates 2,700 new jobs. The report estimated that additional investment between 2007 and 2010 will be between $14 billion and $19 billion, which will create between 400,000 and 500,000 new jobs.”

Cheeseman extols the economically stimulating effect of renewable energy, noting that worldwide wind power capacity increased 50 percent between 2006 and 2007, while solar power accounts for forty percent of the capacity in developing countries.

This is a sunny forecast from a publication that looks at the business side of renewable energy. But New West is focusing on the ways that the credit collapse and global economic downturn has slowed the solar power industry. “Stock analysts have downgraded solar companies,” reports Richard Martin, and “Xcel Energy announced it is slashing the rebate it offers to homeowners installing new solar panels.”

Xcel is reducing its solar-panel rebate because Congress’ bailout package offers a generous tax credit to solar users. But the credit will take a while to implement, meaning a higher up-front cost. In an economy where homeowners are hurting, it’s hard for them to make the sort of long-term investment solar power entails.

Image courtesy of Pink Dispatcher, licensed by Creative Commons.

The field of institutions and public figures endorsing Barack Obama is getting really crowded, and it’s a motley assortment. Some fairly unlikely personalities are in the tank, including Christopher Buckley, Christopher Hitchens and Colin Powell, as well as conservative publications like the Record.

Spend a few minutes perusing the Wikipedia page listing Obama’s endorsements, and you might visualize a rowdy cocktail party whose guest list includes editors from nearly every major U.S. newspaper (including the Chicago Tribune, marking its first endorsement of a Democratic presidential candidate in its 161-year history); hundreds of current and former governors, mayors, and legislators; CEOs, actors, rock stars, and authors; and even the plumbers’ union (presumably Joe the Plumber was not consulted since, well, he’s not a plumber).

The New Yorker provided a characteristically thorough endorsement of Obama. The New York Times argues for the relevance of newspaper endorsements. And there’s a nifty map illustrating the distribution of this year’s newspaper endorsements and comparing it with 2004’s. 

Several cast members of HBO's The Wire are stumping for Obama. (Gbenga Akinnagbe, if he’s half as terrifying as the drug lieutenant he played on the series, will make a very compelling canvasser). An absolutely fabulous coterie of fashion designers has pledged allegiance. And ostensibly apolitical publications have weighed in, most recently the science magazine Seed.

Leading the ironic-endorsement pack is onetime McCain campaign advisor Charles Fried, whose decision to back Obama is partially due to McCain’s “choice of Sarah Palin at a time of deep national crisis” (via Talking Points Memo).

All of which begs the question: Who’s in poor old John McCain’s corner? The list of newspapers endorsing him is considerably shorter than Obama’s. There’s Steve Forbes, of course. And then there’s the small faction of Hollywood conservatives (say it ain’t so, Gary Sinise!).

Image courtesy of Philip (Flip) Kromer, licensed under Creative Commons.

This November 4, voters aren’t just deciding which candidates to elect. People will also vote on ballot initiatives, many of which have far-reaching repercussions. In California, for instance, voters choose whether to pass Proposition 8, an amendment that “Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry.” Unfortunately, in the media hype surrounding individual candidates, people tend to be woefully under-informed about ballot measures.

The website TransparentDemocracy is trying to change that, allowing netizens a sneak peak at their ballots before they enter the voting booth. Outside organizations are also encouraged to register their opinions on ballot measures, allowing voters to see who supports which initiatives.

The site is currently in its beta form, so there are still a lot of bugs to be worked out. And some of the ballots on the site were misleading. On the Minnesota ballot, for example, the amendment called “Clean Water, Wildlife, Cultural Heritage, and Natural Areas,” also known as Vote Yes, was simply called “Sales Tax Increase.”

Glitches aside, the idea of giving voters a place where they can easily view their ballots before they enter the booth seems laudable. Rather than forcing people to form an opinion on ballot initiatives while standing inside the voting booth, TransparentDemocracy could help create a more informed electorate.

There’s a steady feed of anxiety buzzing across the airwaves and blogosphere about Barack Obama falling short on Election Day.

First, there’s the infomercial gamble.

Then there’s the incessant stream of bad news about voter suppression. And the potential of a Florida redux.

And where to begin with the polls? Nate Silver’s soothing graphics and heady analysis can’t even stave the fear that the polls are way off. The New Republic and Washington Post have some scary bedtime reading on that front. But what about the impact of Obama’s perceived lead? Will it keep would-be Obama voters at home? Will it convince hard lefters to go Green Party? How anyone in a post-Bush v. Gore world could succumb to such a line seems inconceivable, but my colleagues Julie and Danielle kindled such irrational fears in me yesterday by reporting that Green Party nitwits at Minneapolis’ trendiest co-op are handing out fliers for Cynthia McKinney with the chant, “Obama’s up 14 points.”

As if this glut of fear weren’t enough, some folks are spinning some hypothetical nightmare scenarios with all the care of horror film scriptwriters.

Newseek’s Jonathan Alter was kind enough to spin this Halloween-esque yarn about “Why McCain Won”:

Obama shifted New Mexico, Iowa and Nevada from red to blue. But there was a reason Virginia hadn't gone Democratic since 1964. The transformation of the northern part of the state couldn't overcome a huge McCain margin among whites farther south. They weren't the racists of their parents' generation, but they weren't quite ready to vote for the unthinkable, either.

...

Obama had wired every college campus in the country, and he enjoyed great enthusiasm among politically engaged young people. But less-engaged students told reporters the day after the election that they had meant to vote for Obama but were "too busy." History held: young people once again voted in lower percentages than their elders. Waiting for them turned out to be like waiting for Godot.

And then there’s this personalized bit of horror that’s making the rounds from MoveOn.org. (I thank my big brother for sending it to me after I rattled on a little too long about recurring nightmares of McCain taking Pennsylvania.)

So what’s a nervous wreck to do, outside of hitting the bottle or the Xanax?

Normally, I wouldn’t turn to Larry David for advice about anxiety, but he does offer one option that, I suspect, many others are taking:

The one concession I’ve made to maintain some form of sanity is that I've taken to censoring my news, just like the old Soviet Union. The citizenry (me) only gets to read and listen to what I deem appropriate for its health and well-being.

Of course, there’s always yoga. The Huffington Post’s Tara Stiles has some election-timed tips in this video.

The Associated Press has a few suggestions as well:

Take care of yourself by getting enough sleep, eating right and exercising. You'll feel better while recognizing those things you can control, says Wilmette, Ill.-based psychologist Nancy Molitor.

Realize that no candidate is as good — or as bad — as you might imagine, Molitor says.

When all else fails, change the subject, says Lisa Miller, associate professor of psychology at Columbia University Teachers College in New York. "Turn to those things which are more eternal and more important, such as nature and family," she says. "It's a great time to go into nature. Go camping."

Unfortunately, these tips seem about as realistically helpful as the fantastical prescriptions the Stranger came up with last month, such as Palium, which “[i]nduces a Valium-like calm with respect to all things Sarah Palin.”

In truth, the best plan is to either tune out until November 5th or white-knuckle it until the results are in (really in).

During a speech in Pittsburgh last week, Salon.com reports that Sarah Palin took another swing at earmarked spending, giving a specific wink towards "fruit fly research in Paris, France!"

Palin was referring to money secured by California congressman Mike Thompson for the study of the olive fruit fly, according to Salon. The Alaska Governor opted not to tell the audience that the flies have been infesting olive groves for decades in Mediterranean climates (hence research in France) and more recently have started affecting crops in California. Thompson was adamant about his decision to fund studies of the pest, which he called "the single largest threat to the U.S. olive and olive oil industries.”

Palin may attack the program as frivolous, but fruit fly testing has proven indispensable in genetic research (it was through fruit flies that we discovered how chromosomes determine sex, for example), and it’s also helped scientists better understand autism, an issue in which Palin has repeatedly shown interest.

It's also worth noting that just a few months ago, Palin herself had pushed for earmarked money to study, among other things, the mating habits of crabs. That study seems less ridiculous when revealed that the money would be used to research "Bering Sea crab productivity and sustainability as necessary to restore crab stocks."

Attacking fruit fly and crab studies could make for a cheap political point in front of audiences, but a little more information shows that kind of research deserves respect.

Image courtesy of  shioshvili , licensed under  Creative Commons .

Talk of assassination during this presidential election has been a taboo violated in a few notorious instances. But yesterday’s discovery of a disturbing, if far-fetched, neo-Nazi plot to assassinate Barack Obama has renewed anxiety about various worst-case scenarios that many people think about but few mention aloud.

Yesterday’s revelation is only the latest resurgence of the A-word. There was Hillary Clinton’s unfortunate RFK gaffe last spring. There are jokes made by Fox pundits. There are websites created by insane people. And then there are the  sentiments of those at Sarah Palin’s rallies, who have shouted  “Kill him!” on more than one occasion.

Blog chatter among those sympathetic to the candidate is marked by anxiety. After Gawker ran a photo of Obama addressing a crowd of 100,000 in St Louis, some commenters fretted about him appearing in such wide-open spaces. “I was going to say something about how much this looked like a Kennedy or MLK Jr. rally, then I remembered how that panned out for them,” wrote one. “I just want to fast forward to November 5, if only so I can stop holding my breath.”

Another worried: “This sort of open air speech setting seems almost [to be] defying history to me. It's as if Obama is thumbing his nose at common sense.”

This comment was met with a sound rebuttal: “You either have to just get out there and give your speeches and assume God or Fate is on your side, or frankly, you probably don’t have much business trying to be president, particularly in these times.”

This last suggestion seems to be the one Obama has taken to heart on the campaign trail, thumbing his nose not so much at common sense but at the cynicism, hatred, and fear-mongering that has been too much the norm of late.

We should begin with what is perhaps the best video of the campaign season:

Here are a few cinematic suggestions for John McCain’s next spate of attack ads. As Mother Jones' Riff blog notes, the Wes Anderson take at the end is the best:

And now compare the responses of Joe Biden and Sarah Palin when asked by children what exactly the vice president does. (Hint: One of their answers is accurate.)

Biden's remarks come toward the end, but it's worth watching the whole thing:

Governor Palin, your response?

The blog techPresident used simple math to compare the presidential candidates’ presence on YouTube, and the numbers suggest that the Obama campaign has a more robust internet strategy. By multiplying the length of each Obama and McCain YouTube video by the number of views it received, the blog arrived at the candidates’ “YouTube video total watch time”:

Obama: 14,548,809.05 hours

McCain: 488,093.01 hours

If the campaigns had purchased that airtime on TV, it would’ve cost Obama an estimated $46 million, and McCain about $1.5 million (see techPresident for details on the math).

The numbers aren't perfect: The watch time and cost calculations account for only the videos generated by the campaigns, the watch times assume that videos were viewed in full, and comparing TV advertising to YouTube views is not “comparing apples to apples,” techPresident acknowledges. Still, the dramatic gap found here is likely indicative of the extent to which each campaign is capitalizing on this new frontier of internet campaign messaging.

And as the 2008 election season nears its conclusion, Obama and McCain aren't the only candidates continuing to populate the site with creative campaign gems. Take this video from Alaska Democrat Diane Benson, titled "Experience":

Well Diane, "Experience" was successful in at least one respect: It made the cut for Politico's 10 worst ads of the cycle. As for converting votes, I'm not so sure.

The election might still be a week away, but why not start mulling over who should be the next president’s “dream team” of international strategists? That’s what Foreign Policy did with a poll of luminaries like Nation editor/publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel and conservative icon Grover Norquist.

There are some intriguing ideas in here. Bill Bradley or Richard Holbrooke for secretary of state? Michael Bloomberg or Warren Buffett for treasury secretary?

And some amusing ones, too: Gideon Rachman, the chief foreign affairs columnist for the Financial Times, uses his bonus pick to nominate Sarah Palin as the ambassador to Russia. And Norquist keeps it in the family by giving David Norquist the nod for director of national intelligence: “He’s my brother and he’s good.”

You can jump into the fray with your own submissions. Foreign Policy has set up a page where you can select among their experts' options and add your own.

Feeling discouraged by the nasty partisan attacks of the presidential campaign? Overwhelmed and exhausted by politics in general? An antidote awaits in the form of Callie Shell’s photo essays.

Shell’s stunning series of photographs for Time magazine, following Barack Obama on the campaign trail from October 2006 to the present, have been circulating in the mainstream media for a while now. But they are worth all that attention—in fact, they deserve several thorough viewings, for like a good book upon a second reading, they reveal new narratives and imagery with each look.

Despite Obama’s ubiquitous mediagenic charisma, not many photos or videos have succeeded in portraying him as an actual human being. (This is probably due in part to the messianic aura bestowed upon him by acolytes and detractors alike.) By gaining unprecedented access to the candidate over two long years, Shell captured Obama when no one else did—in the interstitial moments between photo ops. This is how she grants us rare glimpses of the candidate napping, eating an ice cream cone, or regrouping with his family just like any other father.

We get a glimpse of Obama’s frugality—not a quality often associated with politicians, especially former lawyers—in the worn soles of his shoes as he puts his feet up on a table. We get a shot of him at an Illinois rest stop in the early days of his campaign—striking for its juxtaposition of an extraordinary figure against a banal tableau. There are also new takes on the assured, tenacious candidate we know: his playful competitiveness as he hangs from a pull-up bar in a gymnasium, or the satisfied smile on his face just before taking the stage in Denver to accept his party’s nomination.

Even more poignant, however, are Shell’s images of the people who gather at Obama’s rallies. These are reaction shots in the purest sense: In one shot, tears streak the faces of two teenage girls in a South Carolina crowd. In another, a pair of young African-American boys wait in line to meet Obama. (Their grandmother told Shell, “Our young men have waited a long time to have someone to look up to, to make them believe Dr. King’s words can be true for them.”)

The campaign’s early days are marked by shots of Iowans mingling with Obama in diners and barns, while its final phases produce images of the man standing before staggering seas of people in Berlin and Denver.

Digital Journalist collects the images in chronological order, from the Illinois rest stop to the end of the DNC. The arrangement provides an uplifting, dignified chronicle of an election season that has too often been anything but.

With only eight days left till the big day, John McCain and Barack Obama are beginning to make their final pitch to voters.

Obama will do that on a national stage Wednesday, when his half-hour infomercial is set to air on network TV. But he’s making his closing argument from the stump in swing states starting today and, not surprisingly, “change” is his core message. Politico has this excerpt from Obama’s prepared remarks, to be delivered in Canton, Ohio:

[A]s I’ve said from the day we began this journey all those months ago, the change we need isn’t just about new programs and policies. It’s about a new politics – a politics that calls on our better angels instead of encouraging our worst instincts; one that reminds us of the obligations we have to ourselves and one another.

Obama went on to say that we lost "our sense of common purpose" during the Bush years. "And that's what we need to restore right now," he said.

Also in Ohio, McCain delivered what the Washington Post calls a “surprise economic speech” Monday morning. He continued to push the idea that Obama will raise taxes and go on a lavish government spending spree, and promised that he “will never be the one who sits on the sidelines waiting for things to get better,” according to the Post. McCain also called a theoretical President Obama, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid a “dangerous threesome,” and argued that the election should turn on how voters expect to see their money spent: “Do you want to keep it and invest it in your future, or have it taken by the most liberal person to ever run for the presidency?”

So many websites have run posts on Obama-inspired artwork (Utne.com included, twice) that one blog has taken on the task of reporting daily on new Obama-themed creations. The Obama Art Report gathers images and information on all the candidate’s representations, everything from posters and action figures to sculptures and paintings. The website even has its own eBay store, where the starting bid for all items is 99 cents and all proceeds go to the Obama campaign.

You can also find roundups of Palin art. Fun, although not as organized as the Obama site.

(Thanks, Visual Culture)

Image courtesy of  EricaJoy , licensed under  Creative Commons . 

The always-thorough folks at FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting) have compiled the “Top Troubling Tropes of Campaign ’08,” a handy (if alarming) roundup of eleven misleading, factually bankrupt themes that have dominated election coverage.

Not only do journalists organize the election story around the question—not terribly helpful to voters—of who's up and who's down, they largely base their evaluation of the race on shallow image-based narratives that the media construct themselves: Barack Obama is an "elitist" who might not "get the way we live" ( Extra! , 8/08), while John McCain is a straight-talking "maverick" ( Extra! , 6/08).  

The FAIR report goes well beyond deconstructing the “maverick” and “elitist” labels (Troubling Tropes #1 and 2), using extensively sourced analysis to rebut the claim that the so-called liberal media has “smeared” vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin (#3) and contesting the media’s treatment of John McCain as a “national security pro” (#4).

Then there’s “false balance” (#8), in which the media’s fact-checking is doled out “equally”—you know, debunk an Obama claim, then one of McCain's, then back to Obama, and so on.

In recent elections, media "fact-check" reporting often bends over backwards to choose an equal number of falsehoods or distortions from each side—which can give voters a misleading impression of the prevalence of political lying when one side is obviously more guilt of exaggerations.

In this election, it is beyond question that that the McCain/Palin campaign has been more aggressively lying in its campaign ads and rhetoric than the Obama/Biden camp. Nonetheless, the overriding media tendency is to blunt that disparity and see the campaign as a series of back-and-forth attacks. . . .

Read the full report at FAIR’s website.

John McCain's campaign tries on new messages like Paris Hilton tries on new shoes. But since Sarah Palin entered the race, they've managed to deliver at least one consistent rallying cry: We are the ticket of small-town values.

Small-town mythology has become the cornerstone of Palin’s pitch to voters. She spoke about “Main Streeters like me” in the vice presidential debate and talked up “Joe six-pack.” In her speech before the Republican National Convention, she told the audience that the nation grows “good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity, and dignity.”

Palin’s speech channeled Thomas Jefferson, who wrote to a friend in 1785, “Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country, and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds.” But the Jeffersonian portrait she sketched of rural America doesn’t tell the whole story.

Palin didn’t touch on the fact that small towns are hemorrhaging young people, who grow up and leave in search of opportunity. She didn’t mention that hope is scarce in some towns, as a 2008 survey (pdf) of rural Midwesterners completed by the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey Institute found. Only 15 percent of those asked to forecast the future of their communities believed life there would be better in 10 years. Palin didn’t explain to the nation that small towns have fallen on hard times. Nor did she promise rural Americans that a Palin vice presidency would mean a better future was on its way.

Because that wasn’t really the point. Palin peddles small-town nostalgia and an outdated image of the “average American” to cast shadows of doubt on her enemies, not to offer solutions to her friends. The Wasilla gal is George Bush, the guy you’d like to swill beer with, in fierce pumps and trendy glasses. She embodies the same everyman appeal that Bush did and uses it to stoke the kind of fear and division that made Karl Rove a household name. But at a time when the country is fighting two wars abroad and trying to piece the economy back together at home, can the politics of cultural resentment still turn the election for Republicans?

Probably not.

To understand why, take a look back at the Republican National Convention, when McCain campaign manager Rick Davis told the Washington Post, “This election is not about issues.” If it was, the McCain camp looked to be fighting a losing battle as the campaign entered the home stretch: An ABC News / Washington Post poll released Oct. 13 reported that 68 percent of likely voters preferred Obama’s positions on the issues, with only 29 percent preferring McCain’s. But the poll found those voters favored McCain’s personal qualities over Obama’s 61 percent to 34 percent. The takeaway? McCain’s best shot at the White House was to make the campaign a referendum on character.

You might think that would mean we’d be hearing a lot about McCain’s dark days in Vietnam in these final weeks. But instead, the campaign has shaped its character attacks almost singularly around the image of Sarah Palin. They’ve deployed Palin’s small-town biography to tell the story of a fabled “real America” that the terrorist-friendly Obama, as Palin and others paint him, isn’t a part of. At an Oct. 16 fundraiser in Greensboro, North Carolina, Palin declared that, “the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America.” She went on that in these “pro-America areas of this great nation…we find the kindness and the goodness and the courage of everyday Americans.”

“I bet bin Laden feels like a real asshole now,” Daily Show host Jon Stewart responded on the following Tuesday’s show. “What?! I bombed the wrong America?!” Stewart skewered Palin further saying, “I guess if you’re from New York City and you signed up to fight in Iraq and you died, I guess it doesn’t count.” Palin’s comments didn’t play much better beyond the Daily Show, either, and Palin eventually issued a half-hearted apology. The fact is, most folks don’t live in Palin’s “real America”; according to the New Republic, 84 percent of Americans live in the country’s metro areas.

It's true that rural voters play a disproportionate role in national elections. Just look at in Ohio in 2004, where they ignored pocketbook issues and handed George Bush the presidency because of his stances on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. Palin’s job is to make sure rural voters put their values above their wallets again in 2008. But will they?

Small-town America no longer looks like a place Republicans can easily clinch by devoting a little airtime to their opponent’s Godless positions on abortion or gay marriage. Robert P. Jones, president of Public Religion Research, told National Public Radio that those two hot-button wedges of 2004 aren’t even among religious voters’ top five concerns this year. With social issues taking a back seat to the economy, Republican dominance in rural areas is waning. A late September poll by the Center for Rural Strategies showed McCain with a 10-point lead over Obama in rural America. The center's newest poll, however, shows a dramatic shift. Conducted in the first three weeks of October, the poll reports Obama leading McCain 46 percent to 45 percent among rural voters in 13 swing states.

Unlike past Democratic candidates, Obama has made a point of showing up in historically unfriendly territory, making sure rural swing voters hear his message. Explaining to New York Times Magazine reporter Matt Bai how he won rural Nevada in the Democratic primary, Obama said, “a lot of it just had to do with the fact that folks thought: Man, the guy is showing up. He’s set up an office. He’s doing real organizing. He’s talking to people.” According to Bai, Obama has 50 campaign offices in Virginia, 42 in Indiana, and 45 in North Carolina, all states his party usually writes off in national campaigns.

When he shows up, Obama appeals to rural voters with an economic message he's been hitting for some time. In July, for instance, he swung through rural Missouri on an economic tour, giving particular attention to his vision for the green economy of the future. The McCain campaign, by comparison, has delivered a shaky economic message at best. The economy simply isn’t what they want to talk about. McCain adviser Greg Strimple told the Washington Post in early October, “We are looking forward to turning a page on this financial crisis." But the page has not turned on our economic woes, and unfortunately for McCain, voters are interested in talking about it. 

Nevertheless, McCain and Palin continue to push a campaign that celebrates the common man in lore more than substance. Joe the Plumber, who has recently eclipsed Palin as the campaign’s “average” sensation, is McCain’s symbol du jour of the further economic pain a President Obama would impose on the country. Yet Joe, at his current income level, would fare better under Obama’s tax plan than McCain’s, exposing deep imperfections in the relationship between McCain's message and his policy.

McCain seized upon Joe without vetting just as he seized upon Sarah, out of a belief that symbolism could trump candor. Sarah Palin is indeed a powerful embodiment of a certain American story that has a tight hold on our imagination. America was born as a nation of small towns, and we tend to celebrate presidential stories that originate there. But that is no longer the America in which we live. In 2008, it's a mistake to believe that there is only one quintessential American story or that Sarah’s is any more American than Barack’s.

Photo by cmaccubbin, licensed under Creative Commons.

Finally, voters can put the media’s constant barrage of election conjecture to good use. Boston Review is offering a $500 prize to anyone who can best their experts at predicting the outcomes in seven key swing states in the presidential election.

Contestants must also guess the presidential race results by total electoral votes and the popular vote, and include an estimate of how the new Congress will split between Democrats and Republicans.

The magazine shows the educated guesses of four political scientists (Stephen Ansolabehere of Harvard; Robert Erikson of Columbia; Gary Jacobson of UC, San Diego; and David Mayhew of Yale) alongside each category. Can you, Joe the Voter, outdo them? If you need a little help, take a look at prediction sites like Intrade.com, which offers a real-time forecast of electoral votes state by state.

Entries are due by November 1, so start crunching those numbers!

Wordsmith.org, whose “Word.A.Day” emails dispatch daily doses of rare vocabulary, has taken up the election as its theme this week. Specifically, creator Anu Garg is featuring words that contain the candidates’ names.

These words have been on the books since long before this never-ending campaign began, but let’s see if we can force some creative connections and use each in a candidate-related sentence.

Here’s the list so far:

palinode (PAL-uh-noad)
noun: A poem in which the author retracts something said in an earlier poem.
From Greek palinoidia, from palin (again) + oide (song). It's the same palin that shows up in the word palindrome.

Please use the word in a sentence:
If Sarah Palin had apologized for her recent bilious musings on the “Real America” in poem form, rather than as a hypothetical hedging, it would have been a Palin palinode. (For Palin-inspired poetry, check out the submissions to our Great Writing Salon.)

bidentate (by-DEN-tayt)
adjective: Having two teeth or toothlike parts.
From Latin bi- (two) + dens (tooth).

Please use the word in a sentence:
One wanting to caricature Biden’s latest campaign-trail gaffe might show him as a bucktoothed, bidentate goofball. 

obambulate (o-BAM-byuh-layt)
verb intr.: To walk about.
From Latin ob- (towards, against) + ambulare (to walk). Ultimately from the Indo-European root ambhi- (around) that is also the source of ambulance, alley, preamble, and bivouac. The first print citation of the word is from 1614.

Please use the word in a sentence:
This one’s too easy. Any candidate can obambulate a stage at a rally, so: Obama will certainly ombambulate in Richmond, Virginia, today. Perhaps it’s a more fitting word, though, to describe his opponents’ wanderings during their second, townhall debate. (You can relive those moments with The Daily Show video below, starting around 7:20.)

Check in tomorrow or Friday with Wordsmith for the McCain edition.

Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank continues to supply noteworthy information from the campaign trail about Sarah Palin’s evolving relationship with the press. This troubling bit of news comes from a live chat Milbank hosted with readers:

…I have to say the Secret Service is in dangerous territory here. In cooperation with the Palin campaign, they've started preventing reporters from leaving the press section to interview people in the crowd. This is a serious violation of their duty—protecting the protectee—and gets into assisting with the political aspirations of the candidate. It also often makes it impossible for reporters to get into the crowd to question the people who say vulgar things. So they prevent reporters from getting near the people doing the shouting, then claim it's unfounded because the reporters can't get close enough to identify the person.

At Political Animal, Steve Benen asks the natural follow-up question: “Why on earth would an independent journalist play along with these ridiculous rules?”

Dana?

(Thanks, Romenesko.)

Image by alex-s, licensed under Creative Commons.

Barack Obama may have a leg up on John McCain when it comes to TV advertising and video games embeds, but McCain has the advantage when it comes to robocalling, reports Wired. Shaun Dakin, who Wired describes as an “anti-robocall activist,” collected data showing that the McCain campaign ran 12 automated political telemarketing efforts in the past month and a half, compared to Obama’s four.

Recipients of the calls are greeted with automated messages like this one, sent to Talking Points Memo by a voter in North Carolina:

I'm calling on behalf of John McCain and the RNC because you need to know that Barack Obama and his Democrat allies in the Illinois Senate opposed a bill requiring doctors to care for babies born alive after surviving attempted abortions—a position at odds even with John Kerry and Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama and his liberal Democrats are too extreme for America. Please vote—vote for the candidates who share our values. This call was paid for by McCain-Palin 2008 and the Republican National Committee at 202 863 8500.

Will McCain’s army of tele-bots march him into the White House? Probably not. Wired cites a Pew Research Center survey that found that almost half of the voters in Iowa and New Hampshire who received robocalls hung up on the calls. According to Ben Smith of Politico, “Robocalls are a relatively inexpensive way to deliver a negative message, and used to be seen as an under-the-radar way to do it, though that's no longer really true.” Indeed, scripts and audio of McCain’s robocalls are popping up all over the Internet, though there's scant mention of what the Obama campaign's calls contain. And unfortunately for McCain, coverage of robocalling isn't translating into positive press.

Image by Joe Wu, licensed under Creative Commons.

The last debate of the presidential election wrapped last night. The clear winner? “Joe the Plumber”—the latest Joe archetype to merit the candidates’ hyperfocused courting. But, to borrow a phrase from Sarah Palin, Who is the real Joe?

Well, he’s Joseph Wurzelbacher from Holland, Ohio—apparently the state’s only swing voter. Katie Couric scored another big interview by catching up with him post-debate on CBS’s webcast. And after listening to him, I wish we could return to the heady days of targeting the elusive Joe Six Pack, whose alcoholic haze must make him a tad more fun to chat with. Better yet, the campaigns could drop the Joe meme altogether. After all, the name is getting less popular.

As for the debate’s non-Joe content, Obama kept his cool under McCain’s battery of kitchen sinks. Bill Ayers! John Lewis hurt my feelings! Obama’s a baby killer! McCain didn’t manage so well in the split screens—at one point mockingly raising his eyebrows when Obama suggested that, when negotiating a trade agreement with Colombia, we should be concerned about the country's labor leaders being assassinated. Perhaps my favorite moment of the night, though, was seeing McCain sarcastically dismiss the “health” of the mother—yes, he even used air quotes—as a reason for allowing third-trimester abortions. Now that’s pro-life!

If you thought some quality time with your Xbox might help take your mind off the election, think again. The Obama campaign is doing everything it can to make sure you can’t escape them, including embedding their ads in video games. According to the Associated Press, Obama’s ads now appear in 18 Xbox games that are updated over the internet. A Politico reader sent Ben Smith a variety of screenshots of the ads, which tell voters that “early voting has begun.” They seem to run a fine line between brilliant and creepy, and blog comments show a mixed reaction.

“Frankly, this is smart of the Obama campaign,” Mark Kraft comments on Smiths article:

It reaches a good target audience with the right message—vote early—and will generate a lot of attention online. It makes those who are technology savvy out there think that Obama ‘gets it’, and is forward thinking. Lastly, it will help to get and keep younger voters involved towards the end of the campaign. Anything that gets them out from behind the game console is a good thing.

An anonymous commenter on the same article is troubled, however: “Kind of reminds me of communist China in the days of Mao when his likness [sic] was plastered everywhere.”

Commenting on the Huffington Post, cnobody dislikes the idea of ads in video games all together: “you pay for the game and then you pay a fee to play people online. you're paying to be advertised to. that's what i object to.” But commenter anokie sees the ads as a smart way to prime the youth vote of 2012: “this is GENIUS!!!!!!!!!!!.... talk about cultivatiing[sic] an electorate...think about all the 14 year olds that in 4 years, when Obama is up for relelection[sic], have already heard of him......GENIUS!!!!!”

Today is Blog Action Day, an annual event that taps thousands of bloggers across the globe to tackle a single pressing issue. This year, the focus is on poverty. We’ll be spotlighting excellent alternative press coverage of poverty throughout the day here. Let’s get started with this rallying call to progressives from In These Times: 

One of the finest traditions of the American left has been its historic commitment to solidarity with the oppressed and poverty-stricken peoples of the world.  

In the last few years, however, the progressive movement has become far too insular. As a result, we have too often neglected our internationalist responsibilities–especially when it comes to confronting the ravages of world poverty.

Ken Brociner argues that while other concerns have understandably drawn progressives’ focus—namely, the war in Iraq and electoral politics—the movement is in danger of succumbing to a deadly domestic myopia.

According to the World Health Organization, approximately 18 million people die each year due to poverty-related causes. This staggering figure represents about one third of all deaths that occur throughout the world on an annual basis. And these are deaths that could be easily prevented through better nutrition, safe drinking water, and adequate vaccines, antibiotics and other medicines.

It’s a point that’s proved particularly salient in the last few weeks, as headlines warming of Great Depression II have Americans gnashing their teeth over their disappearing retirement funds. As folks see their budgets increasingly squeezed, it’s easy to ignore the dire needs of those abroad. This dismissal has infected the campaign trail as well, with both presidential candidates confessing that the economic crisis likely will force them to roll back their foreign aid plans.

Which is all the more reason why, as Brociner notes, progressives must not lose sight of their internationalist obligations. Because if they don’t keep global poverty on the U.S. agenda, then who will?

For more alt-press dispatches from Blog Action Day, click  here . 

When Christopher Buckley endorsed Barack Obama in a column for The Daily Beast last week, news traveled fast. As he accurately predicted, “the headline will be: ‘William F. Buckley’s Son Says He is Pro-Obama.’” It reads a bit more anti-McCain than it does pro-Obama, but it is an interesting piece from a longtime McCain friend and supporter.

This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once–first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?

Buckley opted not to air his opinions in his back-page column for the National Review, the conservative magazine his father founded in 1955; he took them to The Daily Beast instead, hoping to avoid the deluge of “foam-at-the-mouth hate-emails” that his fellow National Review columnist Kathleen Parker received when she criticized Sarah Palin (including one that, according to Buckley, "suggested that Kathleen's mother should have aborted her and tossed the fetus into a Dumpster").

It didn’t save his job, though. Just four days after the Obama endorsement, he was back at The Daily Beast to report that, in response to his own deluge of hate-email from National Review readers, he’d offered his resignation. “This offer was accepted—rather briskly!—by Rich Lowry, NR’s editor, and its publisher, the superb and able and fine Jack Fowler.” (Lowry claims that the National Review only received about 100 emails regarding Buckley’s endorsement—“a tiny amount compared to our usual volume.”)

So, I have been effectively fatwahed (is that how you spell it?) by the conservative movement, and the magazine that my father founded must now distance itself from me. But then, conservatives have always had a bit of trouble with the concept of diversity. The GOP likes to say it’s a big-tent. Looks more like a yurt to me.

With a notoriously “faith-based” presidential administration in its last throes and a race for the White House boasting a varied slate of Christians—a  man who’s been called a “semi-Baptist,” a Pentecostal conservative, a Catholic Democrat, and a member of the United Church of Christ whom some insist is a “secret Muslim”—it’s surprising that faith and religion aren’t playing a more central role in the presidential and vice-presidential debates.

There’s been a relative lack of religious talk during the presidential face-offs, and various spirituality blogs are wondering if tonight’s will be any different. Both Christianity Today and the Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life noted a dearth of religious talk in their liveblogs of last week’s debate, with the notable exception of Tom Brokaw’s zen question. GetReligion also called attention to the fact that the latest presidential debate’s only spiritual reference was to Buddhism, after the website live-blogged the Palin-Biden debate and its own lack of religious language.

One explanation is that Iraq and the tanking economy have largely pushed aside religious and social issues that dominated previous debate cycles. Nathan Empsall at the Wayward Episcopalian is glad the candidates are addressing the economy, but still frustrated by both candidates’ remarks in that regard. With McCain foundering in the polls and in need of a game changer, it’s questionable whether Christianity will make an appearance in tonight’s debate.

Image by Ricardo Carreon, licensed by Creative Commons.

A wiry thirtysomething guy bikes out of the Whole Foods parking lot, a pannier of organic produce strapped to his rack. He’s on his way home to make dinner after a couple of hours volunteering at the local Obama campaign headquarters. He inches down the driveway, waiting for an opportunity to turn right into the busy rush-hour traffic.

He sees an opening and jumps into the lane, pedaling quickly. But he’s not moving fast enough for a hulking SUV whose impatient driver doesn’t want to change lanes. She tailgates him for several yards, laying on the horn, then swerves into the other lane and tears past him, yelling something about getting on the sidewalk. The cyclist gives her a one-fingered salute, then notices a McCain-Palin sticker on her bumper.

Typical.

We are all guilty of certain prejudices. In the escalating (and increasingly dangerous) tensions between car commuters and bicycle riders, battle lines are drawn. As an avid cyclist leaning fairly hard to port, I had very little reason to interrogate the stereotypes embodied in the scenario above. But eventually a few needling questions penetrated my insulated sphere of thought: What if there are conservatives who ride bikes? What the hell do they look like? And where can I find them?

On the Internet, of course.

“I am a gun-owning, low-taxes, small-government, strong military, anti-baby murder, pro-big/small business, anti-social program, conservative Democrat,” wrote Maddyfish, a poster on Bike Forums, an Internet discussion forum where everyone from the casual hobbyist to the obsessive gearhead can discuss all things bike-related, from frame sizes to the best routes downtown. There are dozens such forums for bicyclists and I recently crashed three of them—Bike Forums, MPLS BikeLove, and Road Bike Review—with a simple question: Are there any conservative cyclists out there? Maddyfish (an online pseudonym) was one of the first to reply: “I find cycling to be a very conservative activity. It saves me money and time.”

And just like that, biking conservatives came out of the cyber-woodwork, offering their own mixtures of bike love and political philosophy. “I do not care about gas prices or the environment. I care about fun and getting where I am quickly,” wrote Old Scratch. “I’m a Libertarian,” wrote Charly17201. “I am extremely conservative, but definitely NOT a GOPer. … I ride my bike because it provides me the opportunity to save even more money for my pleasures now and my retirement in the future (and my retirement fund is NOT the responsibility of the government).”

The more liberal bikers in the forums repeated some variation of this formulation: “Drive to the ride = conservative; bike to the ride = liberal.” In other words, conservatives load bikes onto SUVs and drive them to a riding trail, while liberals incorporate their bikes into every aspect of their personal transportation, whether utilitarian or recreational. For moneyed conservatives with a large portion of their income budgeted for recreation, high-end bikes and gear have taken their place along golf as a rich man’s leisure activity.

But there are conservatives who integrate bikes into their lifestyle just as thoroughly as their liberal counterparts. Mitch Berg is a conservative talk-radio host whose blog, A Shot in the Dark, is divided between political content and chronicles if his experiences commuting by bicycle. “I grew up in rural North Dakota, and biking was one of my escapes when I was in high school and college,” he told me. “It’s my favorite way to try to stay in shape. And if gas fell to 25 cents a gallon, I’d still bike every day.”

Berg doesn’t believe there’s anything inherently political about riding a bike. “But people on both sides of the political aisle do ascribe political significance to biking. The lifestyle-statement bikers, of course, see the act as a political and social statement. And there’s a certain strain of conservatism that sees conspicuous consumption—driving an SUV and chortling at paying more for gas—as a way to poke a finger in the eyes of the environmental left.”

The impression that bikers are liberal is reinforced, Berg feels, by the most vocal and political members of bike culture. These are the folks who corner the media's spotlight (and draw drivers' resentment) with high-profile events like Critical Mass, a group ride that floods downtown streets in many cities at the end of each month as riders zealously reassert their rights to the paths normally traveled by cars. Similarly, when the price of gas climbed to $4 over the summer, the media couldn’t run enough stories about the unprecedented popularity of bike commuting. Activist bikers leveraged the newfound media attention to promote certain messages: that bicycling is an inherently political activity; that cyclists care about traditionally progressive causes like environmental protection; that more tax money should be allocated for bike paths and a transportation infrastructure that takes vehicles other than cars into account.

“The faction of bikers that is fundamentally political has done a good job of tying [bikes and politics] together,” Berg says. “The Green Party has wrapped itself around the bicycle.” But for many, biking is political because everything is political: “You need a public infrastructure to [bike],” wrote Cyclezealot, on Bike Forums. “So, cycling will always be affected by politics, like it or not.”

When politics does bleed into cycling, does it create tensions? I asked Berg if he ever feels outnumbered on group rides dominated by liberals, and if those differences ever come to the fore. “Of course,” he replied, “On several levels. I’m a conservative. I don’t believe in man-made global warming. I’m biking for reasons that are partly personal and partly capitalistic; I don’t want to pay $4 for gas.” But he has made liberal friends based on a common love of cycling. So has William Bain, a retired Naval officer living in the Pacific Northwest whose bike commute is a 43-mile round trip. “Cycling is the common bond I have with my liberal friends,” said Bain. “We can get in a heated passionate argument about politics and then go out and try to ride each other into the ground. Good clean fun.”

Berg and Bain have allies in the government who see bicycle advocacy as a nonpartisan issue. Take Republican Greg Brophy, a Colorado state senator and an avid cyclist who competes in road bike marathons and uses his mountain bike to haul farm equipment. Brophy worked with Bicycle Colorado to pass Safe Routes to School and is supporting a “Green Lanes” bill to give bicyclists safer routes through metro areas.

Conservative cyclists don’t tend to get help from all their political allies, however. Some right-wing personalities know that biking is a hot-button issue and make pointed attacks on cyclists while reinforcing the liberal-cyclist stereotype. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s hard-right columnist Katherine Kersten earned the ire of the Twin Cities bike community in 2007 when she characterized Critical Mass as a mob of “serial lawbreakers” bent on ruining the lives of honorable citizen motorists. “Are you rushing to catch the last few innings of your son's baseball game? Trying to get to the show you promised your wife for her birthday? Critical Mass doesn't give a rip.”

Last fall, Twin Cities talk-radio host Jason Lewis made on-air remarks decrying the “bicycling crowd” as “just another liberal advocacy group.” He recycled a common anti-bike canard—that bicyclists have no rights to the roads because they don’t pay taxes to service those roads—before issuing a call to arms: “The people with the 2,000-pound vehicle need to start fighting back.” Lewis’ comments seem especially reckless in light of recent events: In September alone, four Twin Cities cyclists were killed in collisions with motor vehicles. One conservative blogger celebrates bike fatalities and gleefully anticipates more. “Keep it up,” he tells cyclists, “and the law of averages says we’ll have a few less Obama voters in November.”

While such critics tap into right-wing rage at all things liberal, conservative bikers appeal to a saner tenet of their political tradition: the free market's invisible hand. “Let the market roam free,” Berg exclaimed. “The higher gas goes, the more people will try biking.” And where there’s money to be made, bikes and bike-share programs will emerge. When the Republican National Convention came to the Twin Cities in September, for example, a bike-share program was there to greet it. Humana and Bikes Belong made 1,000 bikes available for rental during the convention, with 70 bikes staying behind as part of a permanent rental program.

Conservatives on bikes represent the breakdown of party-line stereotypes. They are heartening examples of crucial divergences from the lazy red/blue dichotomy the pundits are relentlessly hammering in these last frenzied days of campaign season. They are a microcosm in which a stereotype falls away to reveal an actual individual. What's more, they represent not just the abandonment of tired clichés, but more bikes on the road—something all of us on two wheels, regardless of our political idiosyncrasies, can agree is a good thing.

Image by  Kyknoord , licensed by  Creative Commons . 

Having already won over some Republicans and most of the under-25 set, Barack Obama recently conquered another narrow but inspirational voter demographic: the oldest American voter. Sister Cecilia Gaudette, 106, was born in New Hampshire but moved to her Roman convent 50 years ago, BBC News reports. The last president she voted for? Eisenhower, in 1952. After a 56-year hiatus, she has cast her absentee ballot for Obama, a candidate whom she feels fills the presidential requirements of being “a good straight man... honest, politically able to govern.” You can watch the CBS report on her here.

Some nasty sound bites have emerged from McCain-Palin rallies recently. Rally-goers have called Barack Obama a “terrorist,” and one even shouted “Kill him!” But Obama hasn’t been the only object of their fury. The media, too, is taking extreme heat from GOP party faithful. A dispatch from a Palin rally in Florida by Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank tells a disturbing story:

. . . Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her “less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media.” At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, “Sit down, boy.”

It seems the McCain-Palin media wars have reached a new climax, with the ticket's supporters somehow convinced that scrutiny of the candidates is something to get angry about. After all the name-calling, Milbank found a creative way to make himself feel better: He stood outside a rally wearing a sign around his neck reading “mainstream media,” and holding another in his hand saying “I need a hug.” He did get a few hugs, but was also told, “You put your hands on me, you’ll spit your teeth out,” and, “You’ll get a hug if you report accurately, which you don’t.”

While not focused on the scorn being directed at the media, the overall ugly turn of McCain-Palin rallies has become a big story in the news, and one the Democrats are pushing, according to Politico. But Jane Kim, writing for the Columbia Journalism Review, says the rally story is being told at the expense of issue-based news—namely, John McCain's new mortgage proposal:

While the increasingly dirty language evident at these rallies should certainly be covered in stride, and while Bill Ayers deserves independent inquiry, any report from the trail should remember that McCain did present a new idea that is supposed to help troubled homeowners, and assess his speeches with that in mind. If he’s talking about the plan in between the “Who is Senator Obama?” lines, it deserves mention. If he’s not, that deserves mention as well.

Image by Matthew Reichbach, licensed under Creative Commons.   

In a presidential debate dominated by questions about economic uncertainty and foreign policy, climate change made an appearance in a subtly new way. It was only one question, asked by a 30-year old university student named Ingrid Jackson. But the way she posed it, climate change activist Bill McKibben writes on Gristmill, prompted “as close to a real breakthrough as I've seen.”

After noting that Congress worked pretty quickly to address the financial crisis, Jackson wanted to know what the candidates would do in their first two years in office to take on climate change and other environmental issues.

“After approximately 4 million debates over the past year,” writes McKibben, “someone finally asked the right and real question about climate change.” For McKibben, who has been speaking out against climate change for two decades, this small moment signaled a major shift in the great global warming debate. He says Jackson asked the right question by skipping past tired points of contention like "Is it real?" and "Is it manmade?" opting instead to challenge the candidates with a pressing timetable. He also found it remarkable that “their point of disagreement was over who had fought harder for alternative energy in the Senate.” According to McKibben, “it was a way of saying that all serious folks, even if they disagree on tax policy or the war in Iraq, understand that an adult and mature America must take on global warming.”

Jackson, who spoke with Grist after the debate, was satisfied with some parts of the candidates’ answers, but didn’t feel “either one dealt with the urgency issue.” She said she asked the question because the environment has concerned her for a long time, and it too often places low on political priority lists behind issues like Iraq and the economy. “The only time [candidates] deal with the environment is … well, actually, they don’t seem to be dealing with it at all,” she said.

Was it a “game-changer”? Did McCain “take the gloves off”? Did “Main Street” rule over “Wall Street”? Is there another hackneyed expression we could judge this debate by? Here’s some cliché-free post-debate analysis rounded up from the blogosphere.

First, here are the numbers on who "won" from CNN and CBS News. Now, let’s move onto actual policy matters.

Reason ’s Matt Welch is not pleased with McCain’s new and rather vague mortgage buy-up plan:

"I would order the Secretary of the Treasury to immediately buy up the bad home loan mortgages in America and renegotiate at the new value of those homes, at the diminished value of those homes and let people make those, be able to make those payments and stay in their homes," McCain said. "Is it expensive? Yes."

Is it yet another McCain Hail Mary pass in a campaign that will soon be remembered for nothing but? Also, yes. And it was the latest indication in a grim season for free marketeers that there is no corner of American life that leading politicians aren't eagerly lining up to nationalize.

The plan has been latched onto by pundits as the freshest policy proposal from last night’s debate, but as Rooflines notes, FactCheck.org explains why it’s actually pretty stale (as in Obama and the bailout have both been there already):

McCain proposed to write down the amount owed by over-mortgaged homeowners and claimed the idea as his own: “It’s my proposal, it's not Sen. Obama's proposal, it's not President Bush's proposal.” But the idea isn’t new. Obama had endorsed something similar two weeks earlier, and authority for the treasury secretary to grant such relief was included in the recently passed $700 billion financial rescue package.

Meanwhile, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, writing over at New America Media, wonders if we’ll ever get to hear from the candidates about some other issues:

Okay, we now know for the umpteenth time that Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain will cut taxes, provide affordable health care to everyone, drill for more oil, expand nuclear power use, end global warming, rein in the Wall Street fast buck artists, take out Osama Bin Laden, and end the war in Iraq either by withdrawal or victory. And yes we know that both have had a tough family upbringing, and therefore they know what working people have to go through.

These themes have been rehashed and reworked so many times that we can recite them in our sleep. But what we don’t know and certainly haven’t heard in the debates is what Obama and McCain will do about failing urban public schools, the HIV-AIDS pandemic, their view of the death penalty, the drug crisis, how they’ll combat hate crimes, shore up crumbling and deteriorating urban transportation systems, and what type of judges they will appoint to the federal judiciary and to the Supreme Court....

The result is that the only thing the 50 to 60 million viewers who have tuned into the two debates know about these equally vital public policy concerns can only be gleaned from canned snippets from their speeches on the campaign trail, or more likely by going to their campaign Web sites. For most, that’s not going to happen.

Indeed, probably not. But why bother with such matters when there’s the “that one” hubbub to delve into. I think a commenter on Ta-Nehisi Coates’ live blog captures the appropriate response rather succinctly:

Oh, no he didn't == "That one"????

Ezra Klein at the American Prospect parses it a wee bit further:

I didn't think the moment came off as racist. Rather, it was tone deaf. It was Grandpa Simpson. It was cranky. Which fits it into a narrative connecting the first two debates. In both, McCain's most memorable tics were exhibitions of contempt for Barack Obama. in the first encounter, he couldn't bear to look at Obama, and he used "What Senator Obama doesn't understand" the way other people use "um." In the second, he dismissed him in the language a busy mother uses for her third child, as if he couldn't be bothered to recall the youngster's name. But the youngster is the leading candidate for President of the United States. And McCain is doing himself no favors by acting unable to treat his opponent with respect. It's bad form in general, but it's particularly unhelpful for McCain, who has put a lot of energy and political capital into developing a reputation as respectful towards his political competitors.

And speaking of Homer’s elder, Andrew Sullivan had some good advice via his live blog of the debate:

Memo to McCain: don't talk about Herbert Hoover. The Abraham Simpson problem.

I’d add a few more off-limits geezer flags to that list: his need for hair transplants or arcane terminology like “tillers.” I’m not taking shots at the guy for being old, but I am saying that any undecideds out there who are a wee bit wary of Sarah Palin ruling the country don’t want to be reminded of the fact that McCain is getting on in years—a fact driven home most glaringly last night by the visual of McCain pacing aimlessly about the floor during some of Obama’s answers.

To wrap things up, Josh Marshall captured my debate mood best on his live blog when, half-an-hour in, he noted:

This debate's so boring I don't even know what to tell the staff to upload to youtube.

Even if I weren’t an Obama supporter, I would be thanking the man for shunning McCain’s proposal to do ten townhall debates. I can’t imagine anyone sitting through one, let alone ten, reruns of last night. Thank heavens there’s just one more debate to go.

There’s a whole lot of Obama-wear out there, from the streets of New Jersey to the runways of Paris, but the printed Ts and onesies made by Piggyback-Kittycat are especially fetching designs that ought to do well with the baby-mama set. With messages like “Baby Needs a Change” and “My Mama’s for Obama” for the kids and “Go Bama” and “Obama’08” for mothers, they take equal inspiration from children’s wooden blocks and contemporary design. Babies can’t vote, but the persuasive power of cuteness plus progressive advocacy shouldn’t be discounted when undecided grandparents (pdf) come for a visit. Piggyback-Kittycat “head hog” Ruth Weleczki says she custom-designed a shirt for one customer that targets an older demographic: It reads “Audiologists for Obama.”

Image courtesy of Piggyback-Kittycat.

John McCain and Barack Obama “represent distinct cognitive styles” and have “starkly different approaches to decision-making,” Jonah Lehrer writes for the Boston Globe. According to Lehrer, the contrast between the two candidates makes the 2008 election not just an assessment of who's right on the issues, but "a referendum on the best mode of thinking.” Lehrer cites psychological research on how good decisions are made to evaluate the strengths of McCain and Obama’s cognitive styles. Some studies imply that gut instincts, which McCain often relies on, are a great asset in complicated decision making. Others contend that good judgment is more likely to spring from active introspection, which is more Obama’s style.

Either approach, according to Lehrer, “is inherently flawed” as an absolute methodology. It’s important for decision makers to “constantly reflect on their own thought process” and to enlist advisers that will challenge their decisions. Psychologist Philip Tetlock tells Lehrer, “We should see self-awareness and even self-doubt as a sign of strength, not as a sign of weakness.” That may be true, but in a presidential campaign, self-doubt is often attacked as unpresidential.

“The ideal president,” Lehrer writes, “won't conform to the current cliches of presidential decision-making. He'll exude confidence in public, but behind the scenes he'll accept his fallibility and seek out those who disagree with him. He won't fixate on rational deliberation - or worship the power of his intuition. The brain is not a hammer, and not every problem is a nail.”

With less than a month to go until Election Day, Barack Obama and John McCain are pegging their hopes on two very different campaign strategies. Obama is waging a ground war to get out the vote, while McCain is lobbing grenades at his opponent’s character. Which tack wins in November will say as much about Americans as it does about the two candidates.

The two camps’ approaches have come into stark relief over the last few days. On Saturday, Greg Strimple, a top adviser to McCain, dimwittedly announced to the Washington Post that “We are looking forward to turning a page on this financial crisis and getting back to discussing Mr. Obama's aggressively liberal record and how he will be too risky for Americans.” Then the surrogates were unleashed on the Sunday talk-show circuit to stoke the fear about Obama’s association with Weather Underground cofounder Bill Ayers. Here’s a quick-and-dirty video roundup from the weekend smearfest by TPM:

Sarah Palin has beaten the same drum on the stump, saying Obama was “palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.” And in Bill Kristol’s column in the New York Times today, she resurrected—at the conservative shill’s prodding—the specter of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

I pointed out that Obama surely had a closer connection to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright than to Ayers — and so, I asked, if Ayers is a legitimate issue, what about Reverend Wright?

She didn’t hesitate: “To tell you the truth, Bill, I don’t know why that association isn’t discussed more, because those were appalling things that that pastor had said about our great country, and to have sat in the pews for 20 years and listened to that — with, I don’t know, a sense of condoning it, I guess, because he didn’t get up and leave — to me, that does say something about character. But, you know, I guess that would be a John McCain call on whether he wants to bring that up.”

And in advance of Tuesday’s debate, McCain unleashed his own vitriol. “Who is the real Barack Obama?” McCain asked a cheering crowd in Albuquerque, tipping his hand to show what will surely be the strategy from now until November 4: Scare people away from this Barack (Hussein) Obama. 

Meanwhile, on Monday, Obama’s key strategy came center stage as the deadline for registering new voters in several states hit. The Washington Post parsed the preliminary numbers, and things do not look good for McCain: 

In the past year, the rolls have expanded by about 4 million voters in a dozen key states -- 11 Obama targets that were carried by George W. Bush in 2004 (Ohio, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Indiana, Missouri, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada and New Mexico) plus Pennsylvania, the largest state carried by Sen. John F. Kerry that Sen. John McCain is targeting.  

In Florida, Democratic registration gains this year are more than double those made by Republicans; in Colorado and Nevada the ratio is 4 to 1, and in North Carolina it is 6 to 1. Even in states with nonpartisan registration, the trend is clear -- of the 310,000 new voters in Virginia, a disproportionate share live in Democratic strongholds. 

(USA Today has a handy chart showing the two sides’ gains in battleground states. And to read a great account of what this effort looks like on the ground, read FiveThirtyEight’s dispatch yesterday from Tippecanoe County, Indiana.)

And so as McCain, Palin, & Co. rumble in the muck, the Obama team is still steadily hitting the pavement, reaching out to new voters in an attempt to remake the electoral map. (For an excellent dissection of Obama’s long-term strategy, read the American Prospect’s September cover story, “It’s His Party.”) 

Now, that’s not to say the Obama campaign hasn’t launched its own negative assault. Today, they unveiled their Keating Economics documentary and website. But, as Utne.com’s Jake Mohan notes, “it remains to be seen whether anyone besides the die-hard wonks will sit through a 13-minute video about the economy—and how well Obama’s attack will stick” amidst the McCain camp’s sharper jabs.

Then there’s the qualitative difference between the two negative tacks. The Keating punches are based in criticisms of policy, while McCain’s assaults are meant to question Obama’s character. If Obama wanted to take that lower road, he could, of course, run ad after ad showing Palin being blessed by a witch hunter who wants to ensure she’s elected so she can put God back into the public schools. Or, as Democratic strategist Paul Begala noted on Meet the Press, the Obama campaign could start hammering McCain for sitting on the board of the U.S. Council for World Freedom. Begala explains:

You know, you can go back, I have written a book about McCain, I had a dozen researchers go through him, I didn’t even put this in the book. But John McCain sat on the board of a very right-wing organization, it was the U.S. Council for World Freedom, it was chaired by a guy named John Singlaub, who wound up involved in the Iran contra scandal. It was an ultra conservative, right-wing group. The Anti-Defamation League, in 1981 when McCain was on the board, said this about this organization. It was affiliated with the World Anti-Communist League – the parent organization – which ADL said “has increasingly become a gathering place, a forum, a point of contact for extremists, racists and anti-Semites.”

Now, that's not John McCain, I don't think he is that. But you know, the problem is that a lot of people know John McCain’s record better than Governor Palin. And he does not want to play guilt by association or this thing could blow up in his face.

Bye, bye, Florida.

Instead, though, Obama seems focused on the ground war, a strategy that tends to make Dems fret about not swinging back hard enough (see Kerry, Swift Boat). And the nervous Nellies could prove to be right, though I can’t help but think back to 2000, when Bush’s evangelical get-out-the-vote effort stealthily won the day.

It all depends on whether American voters opt to open their hearts to seedy fear-mongering, and, if they do, whether a crop of newly franchised voters outnumber their weaker fellow citizens. In that way, this election seems more a test of Americans than of John McCain or Barack Obama.

Adapted from image by  realjameso16 , licensed under Creative Commons.

This summer, President Bush reauthorized PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. The bill allocates up to $39 billion for AIDS prevention, treatment, and education in 114 countries worldwide, including much of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. In order to qualify for the emergency funding, every participating nation must adopt a set of strategic principles, known as the Three Ones: “one national plan, one national coordinating authority, and one national monitoring and evaluation system in each of the host countries in which organizations work.” In other words, they need what’s referred to as a “national AIDS strategy” to see any cash.

But ironically, the United States lacks a unifying AIDS strategy of its own and has allowed funding for domestic AIDS programs to slip. This August the CDC revealed that America’s AIDS infection rates were up 40 percent from their previous estimate. This translates to at least 56,000 new infections each year. John McCain recently voiced his support for a national AIDS strategy, while Barack Obama gave his endorsement last fall. But a mere endorsement is not enough. POZ magazine has put forth seven specific steps to battle AIDS in America, to be executed by the next president during his crucial first 100 days in office.

The steps are straightforward and packed with information, insistent but not preachy or angry. They remind us that while socioeconomic status, gender, geography, and sexual orientation often come into play, AIDS infects indiscriminately. It must be addressed as an epidemic, and every American should have equal access to treatment and education resources.

HIV/AIDS issues may take a back seat to the economic crisis and foreign policy, at least for the time being, but the urgency of the domestic AIDS crisis can’t be ignore for much longer.

For more on Bush's bumbling AIDS policies, both domestic and foreign, read Utne Reader librarian Danielle Maestretti's Shelf Life column, "Bush: The AIDS President?", from our July-August issue. 

One perversely positive outcome of our recent economic meltdown might be that the imminent presidential election could turn on something as consequential and substantive as the nation’s economy—rather than, say, red herrings like the Swift Boat campaign or which candidate would make a better drinking buddy.

The contours of this battleground were further solidified today by the Obama campaign’s relatively epic 13-minute documentary about John McCain’s involvement in the Keating Five Scandal in the 1980s. The video drives home the point that the savings and loan collapse not only precipitated the recession of the early 1990s, but is “eerily similar” to today’s credit crisis.

By elucidating the complex machinations of the Keating scandal, Obama’s video deals a powerful blow to McCain where he is perhaps most vulnerable—his troubled history with the economy and lackluster response to its latest downturn. But it remains to be seen whether anyone besides the die-hard wonks will sit through a 13-minute video about the economy—and how well Obama’s attack will stick as the opposition accuses him of “palling around with terrorists.” 

For those too busy or campaign-weary to watch the entire video, its 30-second trailer (yes, apparently even campaign videos have trailers now) might prove more manageable.

As political junkies across the country eagerly await the Biden-Palin showdown tonight, On Faith, a joint project of the Washington Post and Newsweek, asked a panel of contributors what they would want to know about the candidates' faith. A few of these spiritual thinkers said the debates would be better if the questions left out religion all together.

Michael Otterson, head of public affairs for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints said:

I would ask Senator Joe Biden and Governor Sarah Palin absolutely nothing about their religious beliefs… The media, political pundits, and many of the public have gorged themselves on religious issues of almost complete irrelevance while the country, deeply divided by everything from the Iraq war to how to control the price of gas, has spiraled toward economic meltdown… As long as respected news organizations treat religion like this—presenting it like it's a public policy issue or giving platforms to extreme voices to generate controversy—more people will become disillusioned until matters of faith lose their relevance altogether. Please! Let's grapple with the real issues of an election and leave the candidates to pray and worship in whatever way they choose.

Deepak Chopra, founder and president of Alliance for a New Humanity said:

If Joe Biden and Sarah Palin aren't asked about religion in their upcoming debate, that would be healthy. The fact that the right wing has profited handsomely from the religious issue doesn't make it fair or even constitutional. Nor does it offset the harm they have done. The Constitution kept God out of politics in order to avoid the inflamed conflict that has mired this country since the Reagan revolution.

Susan K. Smith, senior pastor at Advent United Church of Christ said:

Quite frankly, I am tired of all the discussion about religion and beliefs in this campaign. Being "religious" doesn't make one a necessarily better president. George Bush is religious, but neither the world nor this country seems to be the better for it. So, I really don't care about Palin's and Biden's religious beliefs. I do care, though, about what they think about what is the best way to help “the least of these” in this country and in this world. I hate religion. I hate how it makes people think they're better than others, or how it seems to make people think they have the right to stuff their beliefs down the throats of other people... and still treat people really badly. I think some of the nicest, and most moral people, are NOT religious. So, given the chance, I would not ask Palin or Biden about their religious beliefs.

The press finally found something more compelling to cover than Sarah Palin: “It's the economy, stupid,” according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Each week in its news index, PEJ breaks down the storylines that are filling the nation's news holes, and the results can be quite telling. The week of September 15–21 marked the first time since the Democratic National Convention that campaign coverage had been dominated by a story without Palin as its central character. According to PEJ, the economy sprinted to the top of the pack that week, accounting for 43.3 percent of campaign coverage.

But, “the focus on the economy practically came out of the blue,” despite the fact that our financial woes had been brewing for some time, says PEJ. Take a look at campaign coverage for the week of September 8 – 14:

NPR aired a story this week that may offer some explanation. Media consultant Jeff Jarvis tells David Folkenflik that even the media are overwhelmed by the nature of the news these days. “It’s just too big and too complicated, and it requires both too much background and fundamental understanding about economics,” Jarvis said. Folkenflik writes that the media is struggling to keep up with such huge national developments in the midst of a presidential campaign. “The breakneck pace of developments means a lot of news worth knowing receives the briefest burst of attention before being dropped for something hotter.”

Charts courtesy of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a project of the Pew Research Center. "Top Campaign Storylines of the Week, September 15-21," published September 22. "Top Campaign Storylines of the Week, September 8-14," published September 15.

On Monday the mortal foes of right-wing Republicans and lefty Democrats came together to sink President Bush’s bailout bill. The result of this once-in-a-lifetime cosmic event? The stock market plummeted. Economies worldwide shuddered. And American voters collectively scratched their heads. So, to help you wade through the economic and political rubble, here’s a bloggy round-up of what happened and what’s next. 

First, a quick glance at the blame game. Here’s Josh Marshall at TPM:

There's a lot of talk out there from commentators who you'd think would know better claiming that this was basically a bipartisan failure -- that both parties, Republicans and Democrats, failed to carry their members for this bill.

But look at the numbers. 60% of Democrats in the House voted for this bill. 33% of Republicans. Face it, that's not even close.

Both parties wanted to force as few members to vote for this as possible. It's really unpopular. It's perfectly legitimate (though in the absence of any credible alternative, pretty iffy) to argue that the Republicans did the right thing by killing the bill. But there's simply no question of why and how this bill failed.

Dean Barnett over at the Weekly Standard winces at the Republican party line about Nancy Pelosi’s partisanship wrecking the bailout ball. He divvies up the Republican opposition naysayers thusly:

1) The Mike Pence doctrinaires who welcome a free market curative like a Depression for our current woes. I guess they view it as sort of the economic equivalent of that stuff you drink the night before a colonoscopy. As misguided as Pence and his minions are, they at least have a certain nobility complementing their foolishness. I would be remiss if I didn't note that a significant subdivision of the Pence camp rejects the counsel of virtually everyone who knows anything about economics and instead believes that our current situation isn't so dire. Call it conservative magical thinking.

2) A bunch of other Republicans who would have voted for the Paulson Plan had Nancy Pelosi not said some stuff that hurt their feelings just prior to the roll call. They had thought passing the Paulson Plan was an urgent national priority. Then, the Speaker said some stuff that made personal pique take priority. Outdumbing the Pence Republicans was a tall task--this coterie of GOP representatives was up to the task.

As for how things look now. Here’s the Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder on the state of things, post-bailout blow-up:

Fat cats?
Still rich.
Golden Parachutes?
Still floating.
Cost to taxpayers: $1 trillion.

And Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum emerged from a “debilitating combination of fury and despair” for this prophesy:

Do you know the old saying about credit? "It's like oxygen. You don't know how much you need it until it's gone." We're about to go into financial hypoxia, and it's not the millionaires who are going to suffer most from this.

Back to Barnett, who fleshes it out more.

Here's what's been lost in the debate while people on both the right and left have offered ignorant jeremiads about "bailing out Wall Street." If the economy tilts into a deep recession or even a depression, it's not the wealthy or even Barack Obama's cherished middle class who will pay the deepest price. In any such circumstance, it's the people on the economic margins who get hurt the most. The ones without a nest-egg and without a 401(k) are the ones who have no safety net when they lose their jobs and health insurance. If unemployment goes from 6 percent to 10 percent, it won't be the investment bankers who start heating their homes at 56 degrees in January. Populist rhetoric is almost always misguided. That has never been more the case than over the past week.

And now for the look ahead to what’s next. Robert Reich hypothesizes at Politico’s Arena:

What will emerge from all this? My Prediction is a much scaled-down bill, enacted by the end of the week. It will provide the Treasury with a first installment of $150 billion. Congress will allow Treasury to use the money to back Wall Street’s bad debts with lend no-interest loans of up to two years, until the housing market rebounds. Or to invest in Wall Street houses directly, in exchange for stocks or stock warrants. There will be strict oversight. Congressional leaders will promise further installments, but with conditions calling for limits on salaries and relief to distressed homeowners.

The question is whether this less-than-hoped-for first installment will calm jittery markets, both in the United States and around the world. It's very hard to say, because so much of what's going on is psychological rather than purely economic. We're dealing with the mass psychology of investors and the mass psychology of voters -- and both groups are extremely unhappy right now, to say the least.

Matt Yglesias on what should be next:

Isn’t the most likely scenario that as the House takes the day off for the Jewish Holiday, the GOP leadership rounds up ten new votes from safe incumbents that are then routinely matched by ten new Democratic votes and basically the same thing that failed on Monday passes on Wednesday? The House conservatives who killed the bill have no plan B so I have a hard time seeing them staying firm. In the interim, folks should be exploring the possibility of writing a bill that could pass the house with exclusively progressive votes, since the progressive side does have a plan B. But it seems unlikely that it’ll actually come to that.

And finally, Ezra Klein looks even further ahead to how any bailout will affect the next president’s agenda. The prevailing wisdom is that the next guy will be hobbled by the bailout’s cost. Ezra’s not buying it. If anything kneecaps McCain or Obama, it will be politics, not economics:

When natural economic demand slackens, the need for public investment to kickstart the economy increases. Meanwhile, short-term problems do not obviate long-term threats. The looming dangers posed by health costs, global warming, etc, will not pause to politely wait out our recession. Most everyone knows that. But there's no doubt that if Obama -- or McCain -- is elected, that House Republicans and others opposed to action on these issues will pretend that the bailout somehow extinguishes our ability to act, and reduces the urgency of the problems. They will be lying. 

A realization just hit me like the explosion of a roman candle firing across the sky: Sarah Palin isn’t inarticulate; she’s a beat-style poet, extemporaneously constructing stream-of-consciousness, free-verse works of art during interviews. Consider this poem Palin rattled off in her recent interview with Katie Couric: 

This is crisis moment for America,
really the rest of the world also,
looking to see what the impacts will be,
if America were to choose not to shore up what has happened on Wall Street,
because of the ultimate adverse effects on Main Street
(and then how that affects this globalization that we’re a part of in our world)
so the rest of the world really is looking at John McCain:
the leadership that he’s going to provide through this,
and if those provisions in the proposal can be implemented
and make this proposal better—
make it 
          make more sense 
                    to taxpayers 
                              then again,
John McCain is going to prove his leadership.

Now compare that to the beginning of Howl by Allen Ginsberg:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,

Or this quote from the same Sarah Palin interview:

But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the healthcare reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the, it’s got to be all about job creation, too: shoring up our economy, and putting it back on the right track, so healthcare reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief, for Americans, and trade—we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing, but one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we’ve got to look at that more as more opportunity—all those things under the umbrella of job creation, this bailout is a part of that.

And compare that to a quote from On the Road by Jack Kerouac:

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!

You can watch a clip of Palin’s poetic genius below:

Good magazine is asking its readers to join the ranks of artistic politicos and get creative for the cause. Reviving a project the magazine started for the 2006 midterm elections, Good is soliciting original bumper sticker designs incorporating the word “vote.” Why bumper stickers? “From 'My child is an honor student' to 'Support our troops,' Americans have been using their cars to get messages out for a long time,” writes Good. “And if you’ve ever been stuck in traffic, you’ve had time to contemplate quite a few messages being broadcast from the SUV in front of you. This project is simple: a bumper sticker. The message is simpler: vote.”

Here’s a sampling of submissions from 2006 and the current project:

—Amy Martin, 2008

—Gary Holmes, 2008

—not attributed, 2006

—Steven Blumenthal, 2006

—Gabriel Avenna, 2006

Images courtesy of Good.

For months, my husband has been kvetching about how young Jews need to step to it and use either reason or the blackmail of affection to get their grandparents, particularly those basking in Florida, to vote for Barack Obama. Thankfully, Sarah Silverman’s on it now with The Great Schlep.

(Thanks, Ta-Nehisi Coates.)

The debate is back on. But McCain’s political hijinks this week tend to make a person wonder: What’s next? The ol’ Maverick is bound to have a few more headline-making, “patriotic” tricks up his sleeve. Over at Slate, they're playing the next-McCain-hail-mary guessing game, and it’s a fun one. Standouts from the list:

#1: Returns to Vietnam and jails himself.

#3: Challenges Obama to suspend campaign so they both can go and personally drill for oil offshore.

#7: Sex-change operation.

#9: Sells Alaska to Russia for $700 billion.

Image by Torsten Bolten, licensed under Creative Commons.

The insta-polls suggest McCain’s “the economy ate my debate homework” tack isn’t winning him love among twitchy voters.

Looking beyond the numbers, CQ’s Campaign Trail Mix has this video dispatch from a bluegrass roadhouse called The Coffee Pot in Swing-Stateville, a.k.a. Virginia:

We Are Respectable Negroes has a painfully hilarious running tally of euphemisms for “white voters.” Favorites among the 68 so far:

4. Hard-working Americans
10. Regular Americans
38. White Collar Voters
56. Bubba Voters

And, drumroll please...

66. My friends

The country’s recent financial crisis has left Americans panicked and angry. My prevailing thought whenever I hear the ever-climbing tab of the bailout—after a colorful expletive or two, of course—is always “Where is that money going to come from? And where is it going?”

The likely answer to the first question is unfortunate: the taxpayers, of course. The Republicans, who hate taxes and government regulation, have ensured an unprecedented magnitude of each by woefully mismanaging the country’s economy.

The answer to the second question is trickier. And it may remain vague, as Kagro X points out at Daily Kos. For the Bush administration, oversight and transparency are like kryptonite, and the president has become notorious for, as Kagro X puts it, “threatening to use his veto crayon to force Congress to pass bills exactly as he wants them, accepting no changes.”

Bush only has four months left in office, but Kagro X is worried the president will still find a way to misappropriate $700 billion. “When you're talking about a guy who 'lost' $9 billion in cash in Iraq, you kind of have to wonder whether he's even going to use the money for its intended purposes.”

That we are bailing out private institutions with public funds is deplorable enough. But Kagro X believes the situation will only be worsened if we hand over the money while Bush is still in office.

If there were any justice in the world, the price for the bailout would be Bush and Cheney's resignation. No, it won't happen, but it should. Instead, almost no matter what approach is ultimately adopted, we'll be throwing (at least) $700 billion into the hole with nothing but crossed fingers to guide us through. The best oversight regimen in the world doesn't help you with people who don't think they have to answer subpoenas.

There is hope: “Thankfully, Congressional Democrats (and some Republicans, too) have for the most part balked at the notion that the bailout should come in the form of a blank check.” Let’s hope that Congress refuses the president this sort of absolute economic power during these final dark days of his presidency.

Image by Tracy O, licensed by Creative Commons.

The press has finally had enough of the McCain campaign’s decision to cloister Sarah Palin away from interviews and press conferences. Reporters cried foul yesterday in a widely publicized blowup over who would be allowed to witness Palin’s meetings with world leaders in New York City. As Ta-Nehisi Coates predicted on the Atlantic blogs, “even the meekest, most bespectacled, nerdiest kid has a breaking point.” 

The McCain campaign has been garnering headlines lately by attacking the press, pointing out how reporters are “in the tank” for Obama and criticizing them for being too hard on Palin. The problem is, Jeffery Goldberg writes for the Atlantic blogs, “If Sarah Palin becomes vice president, she will presumably have meetings with people who are scarier than Michael Cooper, the Times reporter who seems to have the misfortune of covering her today.”

Even conservatives have begun to wonder about the McCain-Palin game of hide-the-candidate. Rod Dreher, who blogs as Crunchy Con, writes, “If she can't answer questions like any normal politician, what business does she have on the ticket?” Daniel Larison writes on the American Conservative that the strategy “confirms not only that Palin is not ready for the VP spot but that the presidential nominee himself regards his running mate as little more than window dressing.”

McCain may view her as “window dressing.” He may also view her as “a delicate flower that will wilt at any moment," which is how Campbell Brown described Palin’s treatment on CNN (video below). Brown eloquently attacked the McCain campaign from a feminist perspective, calling on them to “free Sarah Palin,” and allow her to talk to reporters. “You claim she is ready to be one heart beat away from the presidency,” Brown declared. “If that is the case, then end this chauvinistic treatment of her now.”

First the McCain campaign mined the Gustav opportunity tragedy to keep the unpopular Bush from raining on their national convention parade. Now, they’re leveraging the country’s financial crisis to postpone a foreign policy debate that McCain reportedly hasn’t spent much quality time boning up for. Oh, and there’s that other reason: To short-circuit and steal Barack Obama’s quiet efforts at bipartisanship and leadership. The AP reports:

The Obama campaign said Obama had called McCain around 8:30 a.m. Wednesday to propose that they issue a joint statement in support of a package to help fix the economy as soon as possible. McCain called back six hours later and agreed to the idea of the statement, the Obama campaign said. McCain's statement was issued to the media a few minutes later.

"We must meet as Americans, not as Democrats or Republicans, and we must meet until this crisis is resolved," McCain said. "I am confident that before the markets open on Monday we can achieve consensus on legislation that will stabilize our financial markets, protect taxpayers and homeowners, and earn the confidence of the American people. All we must do to achieve this is temporarily set politics aside, and I am committed to doing so."

The Left has voiced plenty of criticism of McCain and Palin’s policies, but one facet of the Republican ticket that has been tragically left alone is its anti-science stance, says MIT researcher John Tirman.

Tirman reiterates the Republican candidates’ resistance to stem-cell research and evolution, and their support for offshore and ANWR drilling. But he takes things one step further, going beyond the moral implications of these policies to look at the problem from an economic point of view.

First of all, in order to compete with flourishing markets like those in Asia, the United States must continue its tradition of innovation and scientific excellence. Without it, “hopes for creating the new technologies and processes that fuel sustainable economic activity will surely decline.” Secondly, scientific research offers solutions to crucial problems such as disease and fossil-fuel dependency, and without the necessary funding for advances in technology, our ability to solve these problems would come to a standstill (a dilemma about which Utne.com has previously blogged). Lastly, scientists from other countries would eschew an anti-science United States in favor of a more tolerant community in which to conduct their research, circling back to the author’s first point about scientific excellence being “the font of prosperity.”

We ignore these issues at our own peril, insists Tirman. “The McCain/Palin shakiness on science issues is not just another occasion for SNL skits or jokes about the U.S. being the laughing stick [sic] of the world. They're life-and-death issues for global health and ecology, as well as our own well being.”

Now that Sarah Palin’s meet-and-greet with the media is almost a distant memory, McCain aides are taking their turn in the ring, and the gloves are off. In the second big McCain-media tussle of the fall campaign, McCain strategist Steve Schmidt unleashed fiery attacks against the New York Times, calling the venerable paper “a pro-Obama advocacy organization” and claiming that “it is today not by any standard a journalistic organization.”

Schmidt's fury was sparked by a story about McCain campaign manager Rick Davis’s ties to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Times reported that Fannie and Freddie paid Davis almost $2 million while he served as president of an advocacy group the companies formed to fight increased regulation, and that Davis held the position primarily because of his close relationship with John McCain.

Bill Keller, the Times' executive editor, responded to the campaign’s accusations in an email to Politico:

It's our job to ask hard questions, fact-check their statements and their advertising, examine their programs, positions, biographies and advisors. Candidates and their campaign operatives are not always comfortable with that level of scrutiny, but it's what our readers expect and deserve.   

According to Politico, McCain aides also held a conference call encouraging reporters to hit Obama harder. “But,” writes Ben Smith, “the call was so rife with simple, often inexplicable misstatements of fact that it may have had the opposite effect: to deepen the perception, dangerous to McCain, that he and his aides have little regard for factual accuracy.” (Are we sensing a pattern here?)

When Politico pressed the campaign about the inaccuracies, they got this response:

One McCain aide, Michael Goldfarb, said Politico was “quibbling with ridiculously small details when the basic things are completely right.”

Another, Brian Rogers, responded more directly:

“You are in the tank,” he e-mailed.

Of course, it is a reporter's job to identify such "small" falsehoods. But, no matter, the media-bashing continues. Until next time. . .

Image by soggydan, licensed under Creative Commons.

A French philosopher might not be the first person a politician would turn to for advice. But Bernard-Henri Lévy, France’s premier public thinker, has written an open letter to the future US president that should be required reading for this year’s candidates. Writing in the Huffington Post, Lévy offers a step-by-step guide on how America can maintain its leadership while building healthy international relations and regaining the respect of the rest of the world. No small task, of course, but the ideas he presents make it seem possible.

Lévy begins by asserting that the United States can hang onto its position as the world’s foremost superpower by investing more time and energy into preserving scientific advancement, higher education, and financial services.

As long as the world continues to rely on America in the areas of scientific innovation, training the elite and allocating its assets, the important elements will be safe. This from now on will be your task. And your very first priority.

He goes on to outline ways in which the American president can reach out to Muslim communities, deal with international aggressors such as Russia, and restore faith in politics itself. He acknowledges that these goals will be difficult to reach, and we may not even see their results in the next four or eight years. But the important thing for the next leader is to try “to speak with the language of truth and courage.”

As Mr. Levy puts it, “Anti-Americanism, Mr. Future President, has become a new planetary religion.” Rather than chastise the mistakes of the past, though, Levy’s eloquent letter focuses on healing rifts and making positive steps for the future. The suggestions he makes are both ideological and practical; suggestions that the next commander-in-chief, be he Republican or Democratic, should seriously consider.

For Utne Reader's take on how to redeem the United States in the eyes of the world, take a look back at our July-Aug. 2007 issue.  

“My name is Gianna Jessen, born 31 years ago after a failed abortion. But if Barack Obama had his way, I wouldn’t be here." So goes the ad from a nonprofit 527 group called BornAliveTruth.org, which produced the 30-second spot (via PrezVid) amidst a swirl of confusion and controversy surrounding Barack Obama’s voting record on “born-alive” legislation before the Illinois State Senate.

The history of Obama’s actual stance, available via FactCheck.org, requires careful parsing. Essentially, Obama opposed “born-alive” bills at the state level in 2001, 2002, and 2003 that he says would have weakened Roe v. Wade. But he says he would have supported a federal version of the legislation signed by George W. Bush in 2002 because it contained protections for Roe v. Wade.

Jess Henig’s article for FactCheck notes inconsistencies in the reasoning behind Obama's votes: The Obama camp contended that there were differences in language between the state and federal versions of the bills, even after the 2003 state bill's language was revised so as to be identical to that of the federal one. The 2005 version of the state bill, which passed, included a protective clause stating that “Nothing in this Section shall be construed to affect existing federal or State law regarding abortion,” and Obama spokesperson Tommy Vietor says Obama would have voted for that bill, had he still been in state office at that point.

Henig goes on to suggest that Obama's stance on these bills may hinge on fine semantic distinctions:

The main bills under discussion, State Bill 1082 and the federal BAIPA [Born Alive Infant Protection Acts], are both definition bills. They are not about what can and should be done to babies; they are about how one defines “baby” in the first place. Those who believe that human life begins at conception or soon after can argue that even a fetus with no chance of surviving outside the womb is an “infant.” We won't try to settle that one. What we can say is that many other people – perhaps most – think of “infanticide” as the killing of an infant that would otherwise live. And there are already laws in Illinois, which Obama has said he supports, that protect these children even when they are born as the result of an abortion.

While there may be discrepancies in the reasoning behind Obama's votes, his support of abortion rights has never been in question. “Obama's critics are free to speculate on his motives for voting against the bills, and postulate a lack of concern for babies’ welfare,” Henig concludes. “But his stated reasons for opposing 'born-alive’ bills have to do with preserving abortion rights, a position he is known to support and has never hidden.”

It’s a complex matter whose emotional pitch is only raised by the use of freighted terms like infanticide and born-alive. Such videos are especially prone to glossing over the political nuances of an issue, which means the facts of Obama’s actual position will most likely be lost in the din. 

AlterNet’s got a rowdy round-up of the 10 most talked-about viral videos of the campaign season. They're worthy of a wee work break. I had missed this one and thoroughly enjoyed it: 

Jews in Pennsylvania and Florida have been receiving deceptive political phone calls asking: Would it affect your voting choice to learn that “Barack Obama called for holding a summit of Muslim nations excluding Israel if elected president?” What if you learned that “the leader of Hamas, Ahmed Yousef, expressed support for Obama and his hope for Obama's victory?”

Jonathan Cohn of the New Republic received one of these misleading calls and tried to dig up who was behind the smear. The supervisor gave the name Central Marketing Research Inc., but would give little information beyond that. Ben Smith of the Politico got reports that the phone calls came from "Research Strategies" and were directed at people in the traditionally Jewish Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, and in Key West, Florida.  

The phone calls have been called “push polling” by a number of news organizations. Some have pointed out the similarities between the phone calls against Obama and the smears that hurt John McCain campaign in the 2000 election. David Kurtz, writing for Talking Points Memo, points out that the polls seem to be part of a real opinion poll “testing the effect of fear-mongering about Obama on Jewish voters,” rather than a traditional push poll. In either case, the smear seems to indicate that as distasteful as things have gotten in this election, they’re probably going to get worse.

UPDATE (9/17): The Politico’s Ben Smith reports that the Republican Jewish Coalition, a group behind other Obama attack ads, has taken responsibility for the poll.

According to Google Trends, web searches for Sarah Palin have recently begun to exceed those for gossip darlings Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. What were so many curious citizens digging for? Mostly pictures, internet-search analyst Bill Tancer told Future Tense, especially “compromising” or “hot” ones. Tancer revealed the top 100 Palin search terms to Future Tense. Inquiries into Palin’s positions on issues barely make the list. Here are the top 15:

1. sarah palin
2. palin
3. bristol palin
4. sara palin
5. sarah palin biography
6. sarah palin vogue magazine
7. sarah palin pictures
8. sarah palin photos
9. sarah palin beauty pageant
10. sarah palin bio
11. sarah palin scandal
12. sarah palin hot
13. sarah palin nude
14. sarah palin wiki
15. sarah palin speech

Photo by Sgt. Karima Turner, Alaska National Guard Public Affairs.

Fact checkers have been all over John McCain lately, exposing a bevy of fibs, half-truths, and straight-up lies emanating from his campaign. Even Karl Rove, the king of political dirty tricks, scolded the campaign (and Obama’s) this weekend for going too far. But McCain’s troops have paid their critics little attention.

Why? Because lying works, according to Farhad Manjoo, writing for Slate. Manjoo calls facts “a stock of faltering value.” He says the increasingly fragmented media landscape “lets us consume news that we like and avoid news that we don’t, leading people to perceive reality in a way that conforms to their long-held beliefs.”

Blogging for the Nation, Ari Berman looks back at a 2004 Ron Suskind piece from the New York Times Magazine that noted the irrelevance of facts in the Bush administration:

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

The McCain camp seems to agree. Berman quotes the campaign’s response to stories about their truth-stretching: “We recognize it's not going to be 2000 again. But he lost then. We're running a campaign to win. And we're not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it.”

Andrew Sullivan, for one, doesn’t think it will work. From his blog:

Reading the "press" in this surreal climate right now, one is tempted to despair. I'm not giving in to it, because I still believe that the actual truth matters in the world. If propaganda could win in the end against truth, then Bush's approval ratings would be somewhere in the high 80s. They are in the lower 30s. In the end, the American people are not fools. And facts are facts.…

…We cannot control these despicable liars in the McCain campaign. We can only tell the truth as fearlessly and as relentlessly and as continuously as we can until November 4. We must do our duty. And if the American people want to re-elect the machine that has helped destroy this country's national security, global reputation and economic health, then that is their choice. But I am not so depressed to think that they will.

Image by RiverBissonnette.

Sarah Palin’s religious rhetoric has managed to both rankle progressives and thrill conservatives. While Palin's nomination may have seemed foolish based on her lack of experience, George Lakoff at Tikkun articulates why McCain’s choice is a shrewdly political move that—in a cultural climate that places family values ahead of issues or experience—will appease culturally conservative voters.

“Our national political dialogue is fundamentally metaphorical, with family values at the center of our discourse,” Lakoff writes. “The Republican strength has been mostly symbolic. The McCain campaign is well aware of how Reagan and W won running on character: values, communication, (apparent) authenticity, trust, and identity—not issues and policies. That is how campaigns work, and symbolism is central.” In this political climate, where religious style trumps political substance and the “external realities” of a candidate’s voting record and job experience are nearly immaterial, Lakoff concludes that Sarah Palin is the perfect choice for VP.

Palin is not, however, the perfect choice for advocates of the separation between church and state—people like Rob Boston of Americans United. “I miss the days when pastors delivered sermons and politicians delivered political speeches,” Boston told the Associated Press. “The United States is increasingly diverse religiously. The job of a president is to unify all those different people and bring them together around policy goals, not to act as a kind of national pastor and bring people to God.”

On his blog at the Wall of Separation, Boston explains that he is not opposed to a candidate who makes references to God. He is opposed to candidates who would let faith do the governing. Referring to a speech Palin made at her former church in which she stated that the people of Alaska should “get right with God,” and that the war in Iraq reflects God’s will, Boston chafed at the idea that public officials might hope to mandate the faith of their constituency:

“I don’t want the president, governor, or mayor worrying about the state of my soul and whether my neighbors and I are ‘right with God.’ He or she would do better building the economy, creating jobs and filling potholes. We have great religious freedom in this nation. If any American feels that his or her soul needs a tune-up, there is no shortage of religious leaders willing to help out with that.”

Image by  wellohorld , licensed by  Creative Commons . 

After lavishing praise on John McCain for his military service, Republicans took the opportunity to ridicule Barack Obama’s work as a community organizer on day three of the GOP convention.

Rudy Giuliani, George Pataki, and Sarah Palin all took turns kicking dirt on Obama’s early days on Chicago’s South Side. Pataki said, “What in God’s name is a community organizer? I don’t even know if that’s a job.” Giuliani chimed in, “He worked as a community organizer. What? Maybe this is the first problem on the resume.” And Palin drove home the point, “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, expect that you have actual responsibilities.”

These were sharp jabs at Obama meant to stoke doubt about his readiness to be president. But the comments left any details about what Obama actually did as an organizer to the imagination. So what in God’s name did Obama do on the South Side and does it matter?

Writing for the New Republic, John B. Judis argues that the important thing to understand about Obama’s time as an organizer is not what he did, but why he quit. Judis describes Obama as “a disillusioned activist who fashioned his political identity not as an extension of community organizing but as a wholesale rejection of it.” His essay details how Obama’s organizing work led him to believe politics, not organizing, was his best opportunity to produce broad-based change. An article published last year by the Nation and another at the New Republic also take stabs at fleshing out Obama’s organizing days.

In response to the convention speeches, the Nation quotes Obama as saying, “I would argue that doing work in the community to try and create jobs, to bring people together, to rejuvenate communities that have fallen on hard times, to set up job-training programs in areas that have been hard hit when the steel plants closed, that that's relevant only in understanding where I'm coming from, who I believe in, who I'm fighting for and why I'm in this race.”

Weigh in: How is Obama's community organizing experience relevant in this election?

Image by Ari Levinson, licensed under GNU Free Documentation License.

Hello? Barack? Are you still out there?

I was a bit skeptical that John McCain would be able to completely steal the media spotlight from Barack Obama last week. But on that account, he hit a home run by giving Sarah Palin the VP nod. (Unfortunately for McCain, she’s doing a pretty good job of stealing the limelight from him, too.)

So what was Barack up to while the country turned their attention away from the Democrats to buzz about teen pregnancy, mommy wars, Republican disdain for the media, and experience versus narrative? After some digging, here’s what I came up with:

Entered enemy territory: Obama appeared on the O’Reilly Factor Thursday night (more of the interview to air this week), and he sent troops into the Republican trenches of St. Paul for the RNC.

Took a swing through Pennsylvania. Obama and Biden attempted to court a state they believe could win them the election.

Asked supporters to help Hurricane Gustav victims.

Told reporters to leave Bristol Palin alone.

Kept mum on Sarah Palin.

Raised $10 million after Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech.

Stood up for community organizers.

Repeated the refrain: “With John McCain, it’s more of the same.”

Sarah Palin delivered a rousing convention speech that will no doubt add to her likability quotient among the not-yet-saved. Plus, she’s really good with a sarcastic flourish. So what’s a jittery Democrat to do? Here are four strategies the Democrats should take away from last night:

1. Ignore the condescending impulse to go easy on a woman. Unleash Joe Biden on the self-proclaimed hockey-mom pitbull in the VP debates.

2. Repeat the following over and over: “Parents: If your daughter is raped, Sarah Palin wants to force her to give birth to her assailants’ child.” Another rendition goes like this: “Sarah Palin wants to force victims of incest to give birth to their sibling/child.”

3. Last night showed that the Republican strategy for dealing with the country’s woes is to rail against big government, blast taxes on the rich, and wave signs reading “Prosperity.” On the Palin front: Remind voters that her state’s economy runs on two things: federal funding largesse and record oil prices that are draining Americans wallets at the pump.

4. Remind voters what happened the last time they went for the likable, folksy option with a sarcastic jab behind every smirk, a wedge issue to dodge every policy discussion, and the right wing of the Republican party in pocket. George W. Bush may have been nixed from the Republican National Convention’s stage, but his spirit (and Rove’s) was alive and well in the presence of Sarah Palin.

Watch Palin's speech:

For more of Utne.com’s ongoing coverage of the Republican National Convention, click here. 

With rumor and scandal dominating political coverage lately, publications known for celebrity gossip are honing their political beats. The National Enquirer recently made headlines after breaking the news of the John Edwards affair. Now Michael Calderone of Politico reports that the gossip magazine is also taking credit for influencing the story that Bristol Palin—daughter of VP nominee Sarah Palin—is pregnant. National Enquirer editor David Perel said, “I definitely think we triggered the announcement.” The magazine has three reporters in Alaska right now, uncovering more news of the Palin family. 

Not content to let all the political gossip go to the National Enquirer, the new issue of US Weekly features Sarah Palin on the cover with the headline, “Babies, Lies, and Scandal.” The celebrity blog Jossip comments, “All that's missing? ‘Sex.’ But it's implied.”

Also missing from the US Weekly story are the aliens, a beat that has gone virtually uncovered since the Weekly World News stopped publishing earlier this year.

(Thanks, mediabistro.com.)

Yesterday’s rejiggered line-up at the Republican National Convention delivered a meek improvement over the energy level of Monday's kickoff. The attack level, on the other hand, was amped up.

In keeping with the finely honed messaging tack of saying one thing, repeatedly, and doing another, the Republican speakers worked in their patriotic jabs at Barack Obama, despite earlier talking points about ditching partisan attacks at the convention to put on their “American hats” and support those weathering Gustav in the Gulf Coast.

Michele Bachmann—the Minnesota U.S. representative best known for ogling George W. Bush at his 2007 State of the Union and, more recently, explaining that we don’t need to save the environment from global warming because Jesus already saved the world—grinned big as she told the delegates:

Service isn’t a political trait—although some Presidential nominees certainly know more about service than others.

Joe Lieberman woke up from his keynote to call Obama a scaredy cat:

When others wanted to retreat in defeat from the field of battle, which would have been a disaster for the U.S.A. When colleagues like Barack Obama were voting to cut off funding for our American troops on the battlefield, John McCain had the courage to stand against the tide of public opinion, advocate the surge, support the surge, and because of that, today, America’s troops are coming home, thousands of them, and they’re coming home in honor.

And, perhaps most indicative of the Republican line of attack to come, former Senator Fred Thompson noted:

It’s pretty clear there are two questions we'll never have to ask ourselves [about John McCain], “Who is this man?” and “Can we trust this man with the presidency?” 

Translation: Do we really know who this Barack Hussein Obama character is?

Tonight promises a higher energy level. The Republicans will get their own version of the “What will she do?” moment that buzzed the Democratic convention with dramatic anticipation before Hillary Clinton took the stage. In the Republicans’ rendition, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin will step up to the podium amidst a swirl of recently unearthed backstories. How will she address her daughter’s pregnancy? Any word about sitting through a sermon about how Israeli Jews bring terrorist attacks on themselves for not accepting the Christian path? Or her own take that the United State’s escapade in Iraq was “God’s plan”? Or her affiliation with the Alaska Independence Party, whose founder hates America? And then there’s that Bridge to Nowhere she supported before she rejected it... and her status as a crusader against earmarks who brought in $27 million in earmarks for the town of 6,700 she governed? 

In his convention speech, Obama plucked off each of the Republican talking points against him in rapid fire succession. But he had the time to craft that strategy. Given Palin’s hasty vetting process, it’s unlikely the Republicans will be able to put together such a comprehensive counter-offense. We’ll see tonight. 

For more of Utne.com’s ongoing coverage of the Republican National Convention, click here. 

The internet is buzzing with news about John McCain’s VP pick, Sarah Palin. Bloggers are struggling to figure out who the Alaskan governor really is. Twitter user Eamon 1916 claims that, “Sarah Palin taught MacGuyver [sic] everything he knows.”  Twitter user Dabolos writes, “Sarah Palin isn't qualified for VP, but she did stay in a Holiday Inn last night.

The posts aren’t true, but they’re part of a “Little Known Facts” meme jetting around Twitter. Other favorites from CNetNews include: “Sarah Palin wants more cowbell” and “Sarah Palin knows who was on the grassy knoll.” Michael Turk, another Twitter user, is credited with starting the trend. 

Fake Sarah Palin news can also be found on the blog Welcome to the PalinDrome, where the authors poke fun at “liberels [sic]” and have asked readers to contribute money for a new snowmobile. The site seems to be taking cues from the fake Harriet Meiers blog that appeared when Meiers was nominated as a potential Supreme Court justice.

The real battle ground in the fight for Palin information was her Wikipedia page, even before her nomination was announced. NPR News reports that a pseudonymous user known as “Young Trigg” began editing Palin’s Wikipedia page hours before the nomination was made public. The user, whose name may be a reference to Palin’s youngest child Trig, made some 30 edits, all of which cast Palin in a positive light. Young Trigg chose to deemphasize Palin’s experience in a beauty pageant and focused the entry on her governing prowess and tenacity as a high school basketball player.

Image by  Thomas Roche , licensed under  Creative Commons . 

The march began roughly on time, with a slow but determined mass moving down the capitol’s hill toward downtown Saint Paul. I began walking next to an anti-capitalist black bloc. An exuberant young man with a megaphone led protesters in chants of “No war but the class war!” and “A … Anti … Anti-Capitalista!”—after which last chant I heard a Bloc member behind me confide to his friend, “I don’t even know what that means.”

I really, really hoped he was kidding. After Megaphone Guy announced that protestors had smashed the windows of a bus full of delegates and the people around me cheered, claustrophobia began to set in and I decided to peel away from this group and observe other portions of the march.

The Revolution will be exhaustively photographed …

 … and merchandized.

Police in riot gear appeared at several intersections to control the flow of the march. I overheard one policewoman in the front line say to a protestor, “I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”

 
As the march neared the Xcel Center, it was herded through a metal fence.
 

After emerging from the fencing, the march appeared to be doubling back on itself. From the median in front of Mickey’s Dining Car, I was able to observe it headed both ways.

Code Pink and the Backbone Campaign along with some other very theatrical groups, lending the march a parade-like aspect.

What I saw next had a way of putting everything in perspective. On the other side of the median, marching past Mickey’s, I was suddenly confronted by a huge delegation from Iraq Veterans Against The War, joined by older veterans of other wars in a powerful and dignified procession.

Not to diminish the efforts of the many protest groups which turned out in powerful numbers, but this segment of the march seemed the most—well, real. And certainly the most moving.

I was not witness to the clashes between police and protesters that occurred; from where I was standing, things proceeded in an orderly fashion. There was, however, another Utne writer caught up in the commotion and tear gas, and her perspective is unfortunately very different from mine.

Images courtesy of the author.

For more of Utne.com’s ongoing coverage of the Republican National Convention, click here. 

The Republican National Convention lumbered to a start Monday with a business-only agenda, a Hurricane Gustav damper, raucous demonstrations, and fresh family drama from Sarah Palin.

St. Paul’s Xcel center was none-too-densely populated, but the delegates who showed up for the quorum wore their happy faces. If some folks were disappointed that Bush & Cheney were tending to Gustav and weren’t going to speak as planned, party leaders probably heaved a sigh of relief. (If only the RNC was held in 2005, maybe New Orleans would have gotten their attention. Three years later, things are much more attuned to looming natural disaster tragedy: The convention even opened with an appeal for everyone to donate to those affected by Gustav via text message, a tack the Obama team scooped by minutes via a text message appeal of their own.)

And the business about Palin's pregnant, 17-year-old, unmarried daughter was not going to get delegates down. In fact, these party loyalists saw nothing but the bright side:

“As a grandmother, I can tell you the governor is excited,” said Texas delegate Kathie Whitford-Freeman. “The most exciting thing in this world is to be called granny.”

As for the protests, things got rowdy and messy. Utne.com’s Bennett Gordon and Chelsey Perkins has some great video dispatches from the frontlines, as does the UpTake. For some of the finest coverage of the weekend’s preemptive raids and Monday’s ongoing shenanigans, check out the Minnesota Independent.

For more of Utne.com’s ongoing coverage of the Republican National Convention, click here.

Walking up to the RNC demonstrations this morning, passing by the Barack Obama supporters, the Truthers, and the Code Pink protesters, the first person I ran into was Jeremy Scahill. He’s an investigative reporter for Democracy Now!, the Nation, and author of the book Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He gave a great intro to what he thinks these protests are all about.

You can watch a video of that below:

For more of Utne.com's ongoing coverage of the Republican National Convention, click  here . 

Here’s what the Republicans have mustered this week: A DNC counteroffensive that mocked the Democrats' stage and blather about how 80,000-plus people showing up for a political speech is somehow a bad thing. And now there’s this: A seemingly last-minute, hail-mary VP pick driven by the now-stale strategy of luring disgruntled Hillary supporters.

Word broke this morning that Sarah Palin is McCain’s pick. The first-term Alaska governor is so unknown on the national stage that CNN’s breaking coverage of the nod was basically a rewrite of the governor’s web bio.

She’s got ethics reform on her short resume (and an ethics investigation) and some green credentials. But most importantly and most obviously she is a woman. Why else would McCain throw his experience mantra under the bus? To paraphrase Josh Marshall, If you’re a 72-year-old cancer survivor running for president you better pick someone who’s ready to step up, especially if your entire campaign is based on your EXPERIENCE.

Here in Minnesota, we’re all buzzing about what doomed Governor Tim Pawlenty’s chances. (Our office pool was a boring failure, since everyone picked Pawlenty.) He was the frontrunner in chatter yesterday, had canceled his week’s schedule, and then suddenly broke the Republicans’ tightly controlled message management and—not sounding too happy about things—told a local radio station that it was a “fair assumption” that he wasn’t going to be the veep. That leaves the impression of a last-minute decision, one forced by the unexpected strength of Obama’s performance last night.

While Democrats—egged on by Republican teasing—stewed in doubts about Obama not hitting back hard enough, or Obama leaving himself open for sucker punches by going on vacation, or their ranks not being unified, the Obama team clearly had a plan. They let McCain’s people play in the mud for the whole of August. And in one fell swoop of a speech, dispatched with each and every tactic in the Pubs’ playbook. The speech was smart, and, given the Republican response to it last night, it was clearly unexpected.

Now, it’s not even September, and the McCain team has been forced to chisel away at their best card—the experience card. It’s time Democrats—particularly the pundits out chattering to the media—stop letting Republicans get their goat and leave the self-doubt thing behind.

Image by  Ryan McFarland , licensed under  Creative Commons .

After days, weeks, months of fretting about how to keep Bill Clinton’s mouth shut, the former president showed last night what he can do when unleashed.

Bill has been credited with sinking his wife’s campaign and then, fueled by bitterness, turning his sights to Obama. None of that was on stage last night. He not only delivered the most clear-eyed analysis of why Americans should vote with the Democratic Party, he explained why they should vote for Barack Obama (a distinction not made by his wife a day earlier). Beyond that, he showed why he can be a campaign asset: He’s a scary smart diagnostician of the country’s woes and what’s needed to heal them.

Andrew Sullivan, who’s more than upfront about his “personal disdain” for the man, had this to say about the speech:

Tonight, I think, was one of the best speeches he has ever given. It was a direct, personal and powerful endorsement of Obama. But much, much more than that: it was a statesman-like assessment of where this country is and how desperately it needs a real change toward reform and retrenchment at home and restoration of diplomacy, wisdom and prudence abroad.

It was a night of redemption for more than just Bill, though. Senator John Kerry, the Dems’ 2004 loser, rallied to his moment.

There’s a lot of blogster buzz about how the networks cut away from Kerry’s speech to, as TPM’s Josh Marshall puts it, “feature their yakkers.” (One word: C-SPAN.) Kerry’s speech is indeed worth revisiting for anyone who missed it. It got off to a wobbly start, but eventually took off. The highlight is a Jon Stewartesque debate Kerry recreates between Senator McCain and Candidate McCain.

I have known and been friends with John McCain for almost 22 years. But every day now I learn something new about candidate McCain. To those who still believe in the myth of a maverick instead of the reality of a politician, I say, let’s compare Senator McCain to candidate McCain.

Candidate McCain now supports the very wartime tax cuts that Senator McCain once called irresponsible. Candidate McCain criticizes Senator McCain’s own climate change bill. Candidate McCain says he would vote against the immigration bill that Senator McCain wrote. Are you kidding me folks? Talk about being for it before you’re against it.

Let me tell you, before he ever debates Barack Obama, John McCain should finish the debate with himself. And what’s more, Senator McCain, who once railed against the smears of Karl Rove when he was the target, has morphed into candidate McCain who is using the same “Rove” tactics, the same “Rove” staff, the same old politics of fear and smear. Well, not this year, not this time. The Rove-McCain tactics are old and outworn, and America will reject them in 2008.

Watch Kerry's speech:

And Clinton's, too:

For more of Utne.com’s ongoing coverage of the Democratic National Convention, click here. 

It isn’t surprising that activists and protesters are speaking out against “the police state” in the streets of Denver. No matter what was going to happen this week at the DNC, there would have been someone out there condemning the actions of the police.

There is real cause for concern, though. Beyond the questionable constitutional legality of the protest zones in the first place, which keep protesters out of view of their intended targets, police working the DNC have so far been involved in several dubious incidents well documented by independent media outlets such as Democracy Now!, the American News Project, and Colorado Indymedia. The Rocky Mountain News also has a provocative video that documented police reaction to a conservative Christian-led protest and counterprotesters. 

Despite some self-declared right-wing bloggers who disagree with the protesters’ message and express outright glee at police actions, it should not matter whether you agree with what they have to say. Those who characterize anyone remotely progressive as “moonbats” often have complaints about how their own movement’s freedom of speech is suppressed. If they are as concerned as they appear to be about their own First Amendment rights, shouldn’t they also be concerned about the First Amendment rights of all citizens, including their far-left counterparts?

It’s one thing to disagree with a message, and it’s another to champion the suppression of that message. I mean, come on, there are reports of no badge identification displayed by some of the arresting officers? Police forcing even those who stood on the sidewalks, and not the city streets—many of whom were not protesting—to remain surrounded by police in riot gear for two hours? And throwing down and hitting a Code Pink protester with a baton when she asked an officer why he made an arrest?

These aren't things anyone should champion, no matter their political allegiance.

Image by  zenobia_joy, licensed under  Creative Commons.

For more of Utne.com’s ongoing coverage of the Democratic National Convention, click here. 

In last night’s speech at the Democratic National Convention, Hillary Clinton said: “Those are the reasons I ran for president. Those are the reasons I support Barack Obama for president.” 

Steve Kornacki  reports for the New York Observer that the line was supposed to read: “Those are the reasons I ran for president. Those are the reasons I support Barack Obama. And those are the reasons you should too.”

Two commenters on the New York Observer site were not amused. One anonymous poster said, “Christ, people—she told people like twenty times to vote for Barack Obama! Stop continuing this ridiculous rift story.”

What do you think? Is it time to move beyond the subversive Clinton story? Or are you waiting for Bill’s speech tonight?

For more of Utne.com’s ongoing coverage of the Democratic National Convention, click here.

Hillary Clinton did her duty last night. She threw her support behind Barack Obama and delivered the requisite sound bites. There was “No way. No how. No McCain.” And a favorite here in Minnesota, “It makes sense that George Bush and John McCain will be together next week in the Twin Cities, because these days, they’re awfully hard to tell apart.”

What she didn’t do was say much about Obama’s platform, leadership abilities, or vision. In a 23-minute speech, Obama the candidate (versus Obama “the Democrat who is not me”) got about 3 minutes of time—and that's a generous tally. For a speech that’s drawn most of the convention’s limelight, that’s a big void. It was evident, as the New York Times reports, that Obama’s team had little input in its writing.

We could see more of the same tonight, when Bill takes the stage. We’ll definitely hear about Hillary. But given reports of Bill’s bruised ego and his lust for recognition of his accomplishments in office, we could get not only a primaries flashback, but a ’90s flashback, too. Here’s hoping he saves some room in his speech for the nominee.

Watch Hillary’s speech:

For more of Utne.com’s ongoing coverage of the Democratic National Convention, click here.

UPDATE (8/27/2008, 5:00 p.m.): My colleague Elizabeth Ryan points me to some choice analysis by Anne Taylor Fleming at the Washington Independent:

Yes, she endorsed Obama—mentioning him at least a dozen times. But what she endorsed was the candidate — not the man. He had no flesh on him. He was the Democratic candidate, and that was enough for her.

There was no talk of Obama’s passions, his career, their shared goals and ideals. Of course, she reaffirmed the big “D” democratic values. We’re for the forgotten, the working class not the upper class. We’re for energy independence and a restitution of the respect America used to garner around the world, so squandered in the last eight years. We’re for health care and hope and change. That’s why I ran, she said—underscore “I.” She never said that’s why Barack Obama is running. It was a passionate but strangely impersonal—almost totally impersonal —endorsement.

Hillary had the unenviable task of forging unity last night, but Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer delivered the near impossible: A rousing speech on energy policy that had folks hootin’ and hollerin’. 

Schweitzer hammered home the key principles that Democrats need to keep drilling into voters’ heads until November. First, there are several energy avenues that don’t wreck the planet and don’t rely on “petro-dictators.” Second, all those avenues lead to American jobs that can’t be outsourced. 

We need to break America's addiction to foreign oil. We need a new energy system that is clean and green and American-made. We need a president who can marshal our nation's resources, get the job done, and deliver the change we need.

That leader is Barack Obama. [Crowd shouts Obama’s name.] Yeah, that’s what I like to hear. Barack Obama knows there's no single platform for energy independence. It's not a question of either wind or clean coal, solar or hydrogen, oil or geothermal. We need ’em all to create a strong American energy system, a system built on American innovation.

After eight years of a White House waiting hand and foot on big oil, John McCain offers more of the same. At a time of skyrocketing fuel prices, when American families are struggling to keep their gas tanks full, John McCain voted 25 times against renewable and alternative energy. Against biofuels. Against solar energy. He even voted against the wind energy.

This not only hurts America's energy independence, it could cost American families more than a hundred thousand jobs. At a time when America should be working harder than ever to develop new, clean sources of energy, John McCain wants more of the same. [Boos.] Wait till you hear this: And he has taken more than a million dollars in campaign donations from the oil and gas industry. [Boos.] Woah. Now he wants to give those same oil companies another 4 billion dollars in tax breaks. [Boos.] Four billion in tax breaks for big oil?

That's a lot of change, but it's not the change that we need.

Watch the video:

For more of Utne.com’s ongoing coverage of the Democratic National Convention, click here.

Amid calls for Obama to go for the jugular and burn down Republicans’ houses, it’s worth remembering that this candidate’s insurgent appeal during the primaries was driven in no small part by his ability to lure Independents and Republicans. Former U.S. Representative Jim Leach—a Republican from Iowa—brought that home last night in an eloquent, if a bit dryly delivered, speech teasing out the good values of both parties and tracing where his own had gone astray: 

The party that once emphasized individual rights has gravitated in recent years toward regulating values. The party of military responsibility has taken us to war with a country that did not attack us. The party that formerly led the world in arms control has moved to undercut treaties crucial to the defense of the earth. The party that prides itself on conservation has abdicated its responsibilities in the face of global warming. And the party historically anchored in fiscal restraint has nearly doubled the national debt, squandering our precious resources in an undisciplined and an unprecedented effort to finance a war with tax cuts.

I’ve not heard a more elegant, succinct autopsy of today’s Republican Party.

Tonight is Hillary’s night, all the headlines tell us so. But after that, Democrats should start focusing again on winning over Independents and Republicans, not Hillary supporters.

Watch Leach’s speech:

For more of Utne.com’s ongoing coverage of the Democratic National Convention, click here.

Thanks to the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson for putting all the oppressive Democratic hand-wringing in perspective this morning:

Since I landed here Saturday night, though, I haven't heard a lot of Democrats crowing about the terrible whuppin' they're about to administer. I've heard predictions of victory, yes, but also a lot of questions. Will Hillary Clinton's die-hard supporters refuse to lay down their arms, even if their champion begs them to? Will an unreconciled Bill Clinton steal the show? Will Obama's acceptance speech at Invesco Field be so stirring and poetic that the Republicans will slam him again for excessive eloquence?

In other words: Are Hillary Clinton's followers, many of whom care deeply about women's issues, ready to accept a Supreme Court majority that would do away with Roe v. Wade, which John McCain would surely deliver? Has Bill Clinton forgotten everything he ever learned about politics and forsaken his lifelong loyalty to the Democratic Party? Would Obama be wise to effectively renounce the use of his great oratorical gifts, which constitute one of his most powerful and effective weapons?

All these questions are just excuses to fret. Unlike Republicans, Democrats like to obsess about what could go wrong. It's kind of a partisan hobby. 

The trick this election, Robinson says (paraphrasing Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell), is to "quit whining about it and just go out and win "

For more of Utne.com’s ongoing coverage of the Democratic National Convention, click here.

Ahh, prepackaged conventions. What’s the media to do? How about rehash the primaries? Hence, we have the Hillary Clinton narrative that just won’t die: The party’s divided, delegates are going to spoil the convention, chaos will reign (cross your fingers).

The Columbia Journalism Review’s Campaign Desk smacked down the tired media meme last week. Choice moment:

[T]he angry-women-will-sink-Obama myth is yet another example of the media confusing activist opinion with public opinion in general. And public opinion generally defies such a simple—if dramatic—storyline.

But the media’s not the only one dumping gasoline on a dying fire. There’s also the McCain camp, which just released this ad:

Kevin Drum, newly blogging for Mother Jones, surmises that “the folks running McCain’s war room are getting cabin fever or something.” But that could be a good thing:

Maybe an attack ad this transparent will be just the thing to finally get all those ex-Hillary supporters fully on board with Obama.

Drum points to some savvy analysis by Jonathan Cohn at the New Republic, who notes that despite all the hand-wringing about party unity, the Democrats are remarkably in step with each other:

[F]or all the talk of disunity, the really remarkable story about the Democrats right now is the absence of meaningful dissent on the party's agenda. When it comes to substance, the Democrats are arguably more united than they have been since the early 1960s. Yes, you can find divisions on both domestic and foreign policy, on everything from the relative priority of deficit reduction to America's response to Darfur. But these debates don't match the kind we've seen in the past.

For her part, Hillary had this to say about McCain’s ad blasts this morning at a breakfast for the New York delegation: “I’m Hillary Clinton, and I do not approve that message.”

For more of Utne.com’s ongoing coverage of the Democratic National Convention, click here.

Little “real news” is expected to come out of Denver and St. Paul, and any potential drama—from unhappy Clinton loyalists, for instance—is being carefully planned for.

But this wasn’t always the case. Detailing the events of the 1948 Democratic National Convention for the Huffington Post, Chris Weigant writes, “The Democratic National Convention back then did have dramatic events showing the party not just divided, but actually splintering into factions and birthing a new (but, thankfully, short-lived) third party as a result. All this from the convention floor itself.”

Looking further back, the Atlantic offers up historic convention perspectives from its archives dating to 1884. Articles covering the 1884, 1936, 1968, and 1980 conventions trace the impact of radio and television, analyze the shortcomings of the process, and provide an interesting look at the road to the modern convention.

The story of that modern convention is really a “tale-of-two-conventions,” according to Andrew Ferguson of the Weekly Standard. Ferguson writes, “As the party conventions grow wan and meaningless, drained of all surprise and news value and practical importance, they have been kept alive by the second convention, the journalists’ convention, which in contrast grows larger, more elaborate, and more robust every four years.” (Thanks, Harper's.)

For more of Utne.com’s ongoing coverage of the Democratic National Convention, click here.

Cell phones across the land just woke folks up with the news that Barack Obama has chosen Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware to fill his VP slot.

More to come soon, when it’s not 3 in the morning.

UPDATE (8/23/2008, 11:00 a.m.): OK. Now that it’s a civilized hour for discussing such matters, here’s some choice reaction from the blogosphere.

Here’s Andrew Sullivan at the Daily Dish:

The biggest emerging problem with the Obama campaign is Obama’s reluctance, lack of talent and lack of will to get into lively, feisty, pissing matches with his opponent. This was brought home in the Saddleback forum. What he needs is a plucky, fun, free-wheeling attack machine, with the necessary gravitas to express adequate contempt for the Bush administration's fatally misguided foreign policy without in any way seeming defensive.

Greg Sargent at TPM also focuses on Biden’s attack dog creds:

Rather than whine about how mean Republicans are when they hit Dems on national security, as so many Dems do, Biden has a real talent for responding with an appropriate mixture of mockery and contempt.... Biden, ultimately, shares and embodies one of the core convictions driving Obama's campaign: That Democrats can win an argument about national security with Republicans, and shouldn't run from a fight on the topic or concede any sort of presumed GOP superiority on it.

On the downside, Sargent notes:

The choice of Biden introduces a loquacious and occasionally gaffe-prone figure into a campaign that's largely succeeded because of its extraordinary message discipline.

Ezra Klein , reposting from his June case for Biden, makes the point perhaps most succinctly about what Biden brings to the Dems’ ticket:

Joe Biden is an incredibly arrogant jerk. And that’s exactly what Democrats need.

Other than being the designated Pub flayer, Klein astutely points out another plus: Biden’s been in the Senate a while, knows it well, and can work its levers—something, we noted in our July-Aug. issue, either candidate looking past November 4 would be wise to consider:

And Biden, who’s got a long history of bipartisanship in the Senate and deep ties to the institution, would probably prove a pretty effective emissary when Obama needs a couple more votes for this or that piece of legislation.

On the other side of blogtown, Townhall.com fronts the analysis of the AP’s Ron Fournier:

The candidate of change went with the status quo.... The picks say something profound about Obama: For all his self-confidence, the 47-year-old Illinois senator worried that he couldn't beat Republican John McCain without help from a seasoned politician willing to attack. The Biden selection is the next logistical step in an Obama campaign that has become more negative—a strategic decision that may be necessary but threatens to run counter to his image.

Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin and Ed Morrissey lambaste the soon-to-be-infamous middle-of-the-night text botch. And Morrissey adds a few other dirt-digging zingers:

Biden told serial lies on the campaign trail in 1987 about his background and education, rudely dismissed a voter by telling him that he (Biden) had a “bigger IQ”, and most notoriously plagiarized a speech from British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock.  All of this will come out in this election.

My two cents: Malkin and Morrissey have my vote on the text timing. Obama didn’t want to be woken up by Clinton’s red phone at 3 a.m., and I feel the same way about the O-Team text that buzzed me out of my slumber. But onto more substantive affairs.

Obama does need an attack dog, so Biden seems fitting, but less as a designated hitter and more as someone who can teach Obama to throw a few punches himself. More importantly, Biden’s smart, and that’s how Obama and his crew have gotten as far as they have: by picking the smartest folks in the room and corralling them into a strategy corner.

I agree with Klein, Biden is an arrogant jerk. The Dems may need some of that, but being an ass brings with it the baggage of alienating some folks. I also worry that the Obama team may have been rattled by a bad August and made their pick from the mindset of being against the ropes. And that’s never a good thing. (I for one am glad they had a bad August. They needed to force the media to put McCain in the spotlight for a while. The fact that the only thing that spotlight hit was negative campaign ads is telling.)

Now it’s on to the McCain VEEP speculation race. You’ll have to stay tuned, but at least this time you won’t have to stay awake.

We all have different definitions of financial security and wealth, but some are more realistic than others. When asked to define a “rich” income level at the Saddleback Forum this past weekend, the responses from Barack Obama and John McCain were revealing. Obama said $150,000, while McCain posited, “How about $5 million?” He was ostensibly joking, but his response is the perfect example of sincerity cloaked in fatuousness, and completely in line with his party’s economic philosophy.

Ezra Klein, at the American Prospect, made a chart to contextualize the candidates’ definitions of wealth:

Klein concludes that McCain’s “profoundly out of touch” answer, facetious or not, is frustrating but inevitable: He's been richer, for longer, than Obama and most of his fellow Americans. “Nothing weird or malign: Just the naturally skewed perspective of someone who lives on a particular extreme, in this case, the extreme edge of the wealth distribution.” Obama is, by his own definition, undeniably wealthy, but Klein argues that because his family’s acquisition of wealth is relatively recent, Obama’s outlook is more realistic.

McCain and his companions in the richest slice of America’s population have no concept of what it is to barely get by on a middle-class income, much less at or below the unrealistically low poverty line. While statistically unsurprising, this warped economic outlook will have dire consequences for the middle and lower classes if McCain becomes president, all but ensuring an extension of the Bush Administration’s apparent mandate that the rich get richer at the expense of pretty much everyone else.

Chart courtesy of Ezra Klein.

Pro-Obama bias and soft-focus hagiographies of the candidate are such common tropes that they’ve been lampooned by Saturday Night Live and the Onion. During the Democratic primaries, it was clear that the press was more enamored of Barack Obama than of Hillary Clinton. But similar assumptions about media coverage of the general election—that its bears traces of Nixon vs. Kennedy, with the press giving the mediagenic Obama a pass and training its guns on the stodgy, less PR-savvy John McCain—may be off the mark.

George Mason University's Center for Media and Public Affairs, which has previously released studies touted by conservative commentators to bolster their accusations of a liberal media bias, has just published new evidence of a mainstream media bias against Barack Obama. (Liberal bloggers gripe that these same conservative commentators might “accidentally not notice” the new report.)

The study’s author is Robert Lichter, a Fox News contributor who authored the aforementioned reports alleging a liberal media bias. But now he finds that when anchors and reporters on the big three networks ventured opinions about Obama, “28 percent of the statements were positive for Obama and 72 percent negative,” with a much narrower margin for McCain. And that’s not even taking into account Fox News’ more brazenly biased Obama coverage.

Meanwhile, the Tyndall Report states that Obama has received more than twice as much network airtime as McCain, but James Rainey of the L.A. Times points out that while such airtime may be ample, it’s not always favorable—just cast your mind back to the Jeremiah Wright “scandal.”

Rainey also echoes an old but probably accurate explanation for Lichter’s findings: News organs are concerned about being accused of liberal bias by the Hannitys and O’Reillys of the world, so they swing too far to the other extreme. 

Image by  My Hobo Soul , licensed under  Creative Commons . 

The folks organizing the Republican National Convention are touting it as “the greenest ever.” The radical environmental activists at Earth First are planning to show up for the event, but not to cheer on the recycling program or the use of flex-fuel and hybrid vehicles. They’re coming to “demonstrate alternatives to both lobbying and voting for environmental action,” according to the July-August issue of Earth First Journal (article not available online).

In other words, they’re going to block traffic.

“The most direct way to oppose this dog-and-pony show is just to stop it,” reads the article under the nom de plume of “the RNC Welcoming Committee.” “Stopping the convention won’t stop the election, but it throws a big fuckin’ wrench in the GOP’s public relations machine, and the GOP needs that machine to survive.”

The authors exhort eco-activists to set up blockades of all kinds. “Anything from a lockdown to a pile of materials, from a theatrical performance in an intersection to a good old-fashioned traffic jam will help create the desired effect,” they write. The ultimate goal? “Denying delegates access to the RNC.”

Their strategy is built around the mnemonic catch phrase “Swarm, Seize, Stay”: “Basically, 3S means: Move into/around downtown St. Paul via swarms of varying sizes….Seize space….Stay engaged with the situation.” The article notes that an “action camp” will be held in southern Minnesota the first weekend of August to prepare for the RNC.

Earth First’s call to arms is certainly part bluster. The authors admit that their movement “suffers from being small and stretched thin,” and their stated goal of stopping the convention is probably but an activist’s dream. But the fact is that Earth Firsters and others of their ilk would love to turn RNC 2008 into a street-protest legend like WTO 1999. The authors even name-check that event: “The World Trade Organization protest of 1999 was successful in no small part due to Earth First!ers bringing proven techniques and skills from the forests into the city.”

Because there’s nothing like burning a dumpster in the street to show that you love the planet.

Image by J. Narrin, licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.

As politicians and businesses in the Twin Cities rev up for the Republican National Convention this September, groups throughout the region from all points on the political spectrum are preparing to welcome the GOP to town in various unique ways.

There’s the expected mobilization of protest groups, but there are also anti-authoritarian zines, yard-sign contests, zealous corporate sponsors, and tacky-pants enthusiasts. The latest addition to this list is cartoonists, who have lent their RNC-themed drawings to the hometown alt-weekly, City Pages, for its second-annual Comix Issue.

The offerings by local artists are many and varied, especially in the unabridged online edition. Titles range from “Elephantitis” to “Michelle Bachman’s RNC Diary” to “Zubaz of Freedom,” the last an homage to the RNC's aforementioned tacky-pants mandate.

The quality varies—some of the strips falter when they load up their panels with tired jabs at easy targets; others buckle under self-seriousness—but in general it’s a fair sampling of the area’s artists and their political wit. One of my favorites is “Xcape From Xcel,” by Kevin Cannon, a single-panel strip envisioning a board game inside the convention's host arena, the Xcel Energy Center (which was also, incidentally, the venue for Barack Obama's first speech as the presumptive Democratic nominee back in June). For example, one square says, “You’re wearing a flag pin! Continue playing.”

Or rather, volunteers didn't sign up to turn the wheels of the party machinery? Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) reports that the Minneapolis-St. Paul 2008 Host Committee is scrounging to fill its volunteer roster for the Republican National Convention in September. They’ve even tapped the imposingly bulky Kenneth Anderson, a.k.a. “Mr. Kennedy” of Friday Night SmackDown fame, and Minnesota Viking Matt Birk to appeal in ads to Minnesotans’ civic honor and sign up for duty. Here’s Anderson in one of the ads: 

Minneapolis-St. Paul is hosting a championship match, the 2008 Republican National Convention... This convention matters to our cities and we need your help no matter what your political affiliation.... Let’s show everyone what Minnesota Nice really means. 

(See MPR's Polinaut blog on why Anderson might not have been the best pick for a PSA.) 

In all fairness, organizers have recruited some 8,900 folks to work as “docents, greeters, and all-around Minnesota ambassadors.” But they’re still short of their 10,000 target, and the deadline to reach that number is Tuesday. The deficit is a wee bit embarrassing given their Democratic counterparts’ performance so far. “[I]n Denver,” MPR reports, “so many volunteers have registered for the Democratic National Convention that hordes will likely be turned away.” 

We at Utne Reader will be busy that week covering the GOP convention ourselves. We’ll have our editorial team trolling our hometown and pacing the convention floor. We’d like to know: What stories do you want to hear from the RNC? What missing coverage would you like us to tackle? Chime in below in the comments field.

UPDATE (7/14/2008): Looks like the Host Committee's efforts paid off. Organizers met their goal of 10,000 volunteers over the weekend, thanks to help from Mr. Kennedy, Matt Birk, and volunteer booths at the Mall of America. The St. Paul Pioneer Press reports that they're still signing folks up as back up volunteers through tomorrow.

For more head-clutchingly inane evidence of what apparently passes for political analysis at Fox News, I’d like to thank Daily Kos for alerting us to the network’s fair and balanced examination of Barack and Michelle Obama’s now-famous fist-bump last week—or “pound,” as those crazy kids are calling it these days—courtesy of aspiring semiotician E.D. Hill, who introduces the segment by suggesting that the gesture might be a “terrorist fist jab.” She then consults a “body language expert” to shed some light on the meaning behind the bump/thump/pound/jab/terrorist-call-to-arms. Hill’s side of the conversation can be best summarized thusly: “Golly! Who knows the mysterious significance of these bizarre rituals committed by popular culture, with which I am so laughably out of touch!”

Image by  Chad Davis , licensed under  Creative Commons . 

What do Kodachrome, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Bugs Bunny have in common?

Each is younger than presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain.

The buzzer hit 7:30, the networks called North Carolina for Barack Obama, and the racial rhapsodizing began. 

FOX predictably buzzed about Obama’s weaker showing among whites, compared to Hillary Clinton’s, and his windfall backing from blacks. Not-so-subliminal message on repeat: Can this guy really win whites?  

Over at CNN, demographic hashing similarly swirled. Thanks, then, to Jeffrey Toobin for pointing out the obvious: Obama couldn’t have won North Carolina without white support (some 36 percent, according to exit polls). Then he offered a crucial reminder that seems to have vanished amidst the Wright wrangling: That’s how Democrats win in the South, with a slice of white voters and the bulk of black ones.  

Forget the hand-wringing over whether half of Hillary voters will abandon the Democrats if their gal isn’t topping the ticket. (Those sentiments, gauged as they are in the heat of primary battles, are next to meaningless.) After eight years of Bush, that many of those Democrats aren’t going to vote for a Republican out of spite, let alone one who wants to perpetuate war in Iraq, roll back abortion rights, and take the court farther to the edge of right than it already is. The question is: Will those issues be pressing enough to convince black voters to go to the polls after watching the party they’ve been unceasingly loyal to snatch away the opportunity for the first African American to become president.  

Here’s Michael C. Dawson, political science professor at the University of Chicago, over at the Root: 

Should that happen, the Democratic Party will face the Herculean task of trying to mobilize its most loyal constituency—black voters—in the face of deep and widespread black bitterness and active campaigns in the black community encouraging black voters to defect or abstain. You can already hear the angry comparisons. Just like in 2000, the protests will go, an election will have been "stolen." But this time from within the party! Malcolm X's quote about how the rules are changed when blacks start to succeed will also, I bet, be prominently displayed.  

And here’s a piece from McClatchy last week: 

African-Americans have been the Democratic Party's most reliable bloc, giving about 90 percent of their votes to former Vice President Al Gore and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., in the last two presidential elections.

In a close election this year, an African-American exodus from the voting booth could be costly to Democrats, particularly in the South, where blacks are a large proportion of the electorate.

If Obama isn't the nominee, "there would be a significant number of African-Americans who would stay home. They're not voting for (presumptive Republican nominee) John McCain," predicted David Bositis, a senior analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which researches black voting trends.

Now that North Carolina and Indiana are over, we’ll move quickly to West Virginia and Kentucky, where Clinton promises to soldier on and rack up white-bolstered, lopsided victories. It’s likely that, despite the predominating wisdom that the nomination race is nigh over, we’ll be subjected to more demographic splicing. It’s time to simply acknowledge that both candidates have their demographic battles and bulwarks, and to move onto wrapping things up by nominating the person who’d be the better president.

At this point, it’s not even worth taking shots at the media over the Rev. Wright affair. It’s too easy. Too obvious. And, most disappointingly, too ineffectual. Put the country’s most uncomfortable topic on the agenda, mix in election season psychosis, and add a controversial black pastor who scorns the press, and reporters’ heads apparently explode. They end up asking questions like: “How do you feel about America and about being an American?” (National Press Club moderator Donna Leinwand to Wright) or “Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?” (George Stephanopoulos to Senator Barack Obama).

There’s intelligent reportage to be done on Wright (brilliant megalomaniacs make for rich profile subjects). But that’s not going to happen any time soon; the press—and the public, too—seem to require a certain amount of distance from racially charged moments in order to make any sense of them. That’s what was truly novel about Obama’s Philadelphia speech: He was able to articulate the present moment, not just rehash the past or rhapsodize about the future.

So, given the current media blackout on reason, I’d recommend checking out a pair of recent pieces that give me hope that once the dust settles, we might learn something from this ruckus.

The first is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s profile of Bill Cosby in the May issue of the Atlantic. The controversy surrounding Cosby’s campaign for black responsibility is well-known but not necessarily well-understood. Coates sifts through the fallout to trace the divergent liberal and conservative intellectual traditions of black America, from their origins to their manifestations today. Along the way, he offers one of the more nuanced and original pieces of analysis on race in America that I’ve seen in print of late.

A sample: 

Part of what drives Cosby’s activism, and reinforces his message, is the rage that lives in all African Americans, a collective feeling of disgrace that borders on self-hatred. As the comedian Chris Rock put it in one of his infamous routines, “Everything white people don’t like about black people, black people really don’t like about black people … It’s like a civil war going on with black people, and it’s two sides—there’s black people and there’s niggas, and niggas have got to go … Boy, I wish they’d let me join the Ku Klux Klan. Shit, I’d do a drive-by from here to Brooklyn.” (Rock stopped performing the routine when he noticed that his white fans were laughing a little too hard.) Liberalism, with its pat logic and focus on structural inequities, offers no balm for this sort of raw pain. Like the people he preaches to, Cosby has grown tired of hanging his head.

  ...

  Cosby is fond of saying that sacrifices of the ’60s weren’t made so that rappers and young people could repeatedly use the word nigger. But that’s exactly why they were made. After all, chief among all individual rights awarded Americans is the right to be mediocre, crass, and juvenile—in other words, the right to be human. But Cosby is aiming for something superhuman—twice as good, as the elders used to say—and his homily to a hazy black past seems like an effort to redeem something more than the present.

The other article comes from the Chronicle Review and looks back at a controversy more distant: the 1968 Ocean Hill–Brownsville teacher strikes unleashed after white New York City school teachers were delivered pink slips by a newly empowered black school board. What’s interesting here is writer Richard D. Kahlenberg’s diagnosis of the embattled alliances involved and how those fault lines still pervade liberalism today. The Black Power activists on the school board, who were determined to have black teachers teaching black children in a school system dominated by whites, were bolstered by support from the city’s Anglo-Saxon patricians. Meanwhile, unionized teachers (many of them Jewish) drew support from pro-labor whites and a few of Martin Luther King’s black allies. The strikes eventually ended and the union prevailed, but the rift between working class blacks and whites—between civil rights and labor advocates—that was blasted open by the politics of racial preference continues to plague Democrats today, preventing what Dr. King and others saw as a natural and immensely powerful alliance.

You might call them "unpledged delegates" or "superdelegates," or perhaps you prefer "automatic delegates" or "democracy spoilers."

At any rate, if you're interested in lobbying the 800 or so people poised to determine the Democratic nominee for president, this map based on the superdelegates.org wiki can help you find them.

(Thanks, Marc Ambinder.)

— Steve Thorngate  

Image by Lokal_Profil, licensed under Creative Commons.

Everyone's piling on ABC News in the wake of last night’s debate. The Washington Post’s Tom Shales spoke for many when he skewered anchors Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos for their “shoddy, despicable performances.” More stinging (and amusing) assessments came from those live-blogging the debates.

Here’s Andrew Sullivan at 8:40 p.m. Eastern: 

Now, it’s flag-pins! I'm just pointing out that we are now almost halfway through this debate and ABC News has not asked a single policy question. It's pure Rove, sustained and hyped and sustained by Stephanopoulos and Gibson. It's what they know; it's easy; and it will generate ratings. It is not journalism. 

And Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo observes matters as they further degrade: 

9:16 PM ... Did someone tell Charlie Gibson that he knows something about economics? There are a heck of a lot of people who make over $97,000 a year? Really? I think like 12% of the population makes more than $100,000 a year. And his capital gains point is a canard. 

9:24 PM ... I was disappointed that Charlie Gibson seems to spout off right-wing bromides as established facts. I was even more disappointed that Obama didn’t seem able to knock them down.

9:29 PM ... I don't watch a lot of nightly news. Is Charlie Gibson usually this bad?

9:31 PM ... This is awful. 

Then, at 9:50: What happened to the League of Women Voters? Can we give the debates back to them?

Most telling were the comments from viewers on ABCNews.com. Here’s one:

How utterly embarrassing for ABC, Gibson, and Stephanopoulos. No matter which candidate viewers support, the real focus was the inane questions and poor behavior of two veteran “journalists”... watch out Fox News, ABC is reaching for your star.

The flogging is certainly deserved. When George Stephanopoulos asked Barack Obama, “Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?” bile crept up my throat. And when the debate finally turned from what Shales called “specious and gossipy trivia” to actual policy matters—51 minutes in—the person responsible for guiding the discourse to reason wasn’t even on the moderators’ panel. Thank you, Mandy Garber, resident of Pittsburg, who asked via video an astute question regarding the candidates’ Iraq policy proposals:

The real question is, I mean, do the candidates have a real plan to get us out of Iraq, or is it just real campaign propaganda? And it's really unclear. They keep saying we want to bring the troops back. But considering what's happening on the ground, how is that going to happen?

The inanity from Wednesday’s debate could fill a week’s worth of episodes of the Daily Show. But let’s not kid ourselves. ABC News is not an anomaly. Their display of journalism-gone-mad is just the latest egregious example of the media’s failure this election. And if it keeps up, we could be looking at a repeat of 2000. 

Remember 2000, when the liberal media harangued Al Gore for his silly lock-box and ran cheerful profiles of George W. Bush’s cheerleading days at Andover? The American public may be at fault for buying Karl Rove’s carefully constructed good ol’ boy candidate, but the folks who spoon-fed them the message were journalists.

And that gets to the fundamental misunderstanding of the liberal media slant. Reporters might skew liberal in their views, but their liberal mindset ends up serving conservatives come election season. Reporters know Democrats better; they understand their dirt and games and get wrapped up in them. They don’t understand Republicans as well. That’s why the evangelical machine’s turn out in 2000 caught reporters off guard: They weren’t running in the circles of the right’s foot soldiers. It’s an old but true cliché that the left eats itself, and part of the left doing the chomping is the media.

Here’s the other symptom plaguing liberal-minded reporters: They’re delicate and grievously susceptible to finger-wagging about fairness. Hillary Clinton knows this: When she played the skewed-coverage card reporters didn’t just bite, they wagged their tongues in obedience and upended the gains Obama was making in Ohio.

The final problem stalking reporters this year: They’ve gone lazy. I’m not talking about hours worked; those guys are running themselves ragged filing stories. I’m talking about intellectual laziness. They’ve bought into their own caricatures of the candidates. Case in point: Obama’s boneheaded remarks in San Francisco. They were immediately dubbed a “rookie” mistake revelatory of his Achilles heel in November. Meanwhile, John McCain cavorts about the Middle East calling al-Qaida a proxy of Iran. Does it count as a rookie mistake if you’ve been in the Senate more than 20 years?

That is, of course, a perennial plea to the press: Stop covering the horse-race and cover the issues. Reporters have weaseled out of that lately by noting that the two Democrats’ policy platforms are similar. In other words: There’s nothing to cover but the horse race. It’s a convenient excuse, and it’s also incredibly wrong-headed. Their job is not only to find the candidates’ differences—which do in fact exist—but to root out the issues not being discussed. In our July-August issue we highlight one such rare effort from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which urgently reminded candidates and voters that national security goes beyond the Middle East. But delving into such matters is tough. It takes time, research, and imagination. And that’s a lot harder than putting on repeat those videos of Clinton on a Bosnian tarmac. 

I’m becoming genuinely fearful that what began as a slam-dunk election year for Democrats will lumber, knee-capped, into another Republican edged-out victory. On the Democratic side, fault will most likely be hurled upon the two candidates for battling so long and so hard. The true responsibility will lie with “liberal” journalists. Not because they didn’t take one for the team and buoy the Democrats, but because they didn’t do their jobs.

—Hannah Lobel 

How do you think media coverage has impacted the election? Let us know in the Politics Salon.

Not long ago, I learned that George Bush was the first presidential candidate in the era of television to win against a taller candidate. (Kerry was 6’4”, Bush is 6’1”.)

Now I read this from the New Scientist: “To predict who will win next year's race for the White House, or any other election for that matter, you need look no further than the candidates' physical attributes.”

Researchers from Princeton University showed people photos of candidates in a number of major elections. After just .1 seconds, the people were able to pick the winner of the race with 70 percent accuracy.

It all reminds me of this recent video from the Onion News Network:

—Bennett Gordon

UPDATE: ScienCentral News has more information on the study, including a short video interview with one of the researchers.