The Saga of Sarah.

I guess I don't have much to add to the continuing astonishment over Sarah Palin's decision to say "no mas" and vacate the Alaska governor's mansion except for this: I'm disappointed. I was seriously hoping that the Republican Party, in its current state, would continue to hold up Palin as their Great Oh-So-Very-White Hope for the next three years, just long enough to nominate her to go up against Obama in the 2012 presidential election, at which point she would flame out and put the GOP right back at square one in terms of rebuilding their national stature. God, what a fun ride that would've been. I was fully prepared to go deep cover and volunteer for Palin's 2012 Alabama primary campaign if it looked like that scenario might come to pass.

But it's not going to. My knee-jerk reaction to Palin's announcement the day before Independence Day, like a lot of people's, was that she was unloading her gubernatorial responsibilities so that she could devote herself full-time to the business of laying the groundwork for a balls-out 2012 presidential run. With her brand name beginning to take on some tarnish from Todd Purdum's unflattering Vanity Fair profile and the resulting infighting with McCain's people, she was going to metaphorically stomp off to her room in a huff, sulk for a few months until enough people in the Republican base came groveling to stroke her hair and tell her how pretty and awesome she was, and then burst forth in February 2011 (or earlier) with a recharged ego and a refreshed arsenal of lame down-home witticisms, determined to yank the reins away from President Hussein and reclaim America for the real Americans.

But if she really wanted to do that, why not just wait a few months and announce she wasn't going to be running for another term as governor? Why quit in the middle of her first term? If one of the big knocks on you as a vice-presidential candidate is that you have minimal political experience, why throw away the opportunity to gain any additional experience if you don't have to?

"Sarah Palin isn't smart in what we might call conventional ways," writes TBogg in a short but highly incisive post from earlier this week, "but she has grifter smarts" -- or, as Holly characterized it, "middle-school, mean-girl, locker-room smarts" -- and that elementary cunning was enough to lead her to a conclusion many of us arrived at months ago: There's no way she's ever going to get elected president. Her favorability ratings began tanking within a couple weeks of her acceptance speech on the floor of the Republican National Convention last September, and while dyed-in-the-wool religious conservatives thought she was the greatest thing since sliced bread (and still do), independents quickly decided they wanted nothing to do with her (and still don't). Reports say even her fellow Alaska Republicans had started to turn on her, to the point where she might not even have been able to win a primary challenge in a potential re-election bid -- and when you can't even hold together a Republican coalition in one of the reddest states in the country (Democrats haven't broken 40 percent in a presidential election in Alaska, much less won outright, since the 1960s), your prospects for building anything resembling an effective base of support nationally are in deep ka-ka.

So why'd she do it? Let's go back to TBogg:

. . . [Palin] knows that she can make a better living working the wingnut welfare circuit preaching to the already converted than she can in politics.

He also quotes Jill from Brilliant at Breakfast:

If she were about helping other working mothers and parents of special-needs children and health care for all and a stable job base, she could have been a credible contender for first female president. But alas, she is only an aging beauty queen, a Mean Grrrl who in politics has found a way to extend her reign as Prettiest Girl in High School to use people (or states) and then throw them away when they stop feeding her massive ego . . .

That description stops just short of summing up what I think is a central truth about Sarah Palin, a truth that clues us in to both why she quit her gubernatorial term in midstream and why she'll never be president. For all the talk about all the things that made Palin such a refreshing novelty on the national political scene over the past year or so -- her gender, her good looks, her unusual family, the exotic locale from whence she sprang -- she's not actually unique at all: She is George W. Bush, only female and cute. Like Bush, her most substantial political experience was a governorship of modest responsibilities, and whatever renown she'd acquired was primarily for superficial reasons (good looks = Bush's famous family name). Without much of an actual track record or stated policy slate to speak of, the neocon wing of the Republican Party decided on her as a blank slate upon which they could project their hopes and ideals, an assignment that she, like Dubya, tackled with gusto. But through it all she's expressed the same intellectual incuriosity that Dubya demonstrated throughout the entirety of his presidential term -- they both know what they feel about this issue or that issue, their minds are made up, and they're not interested in acquiring any additional information about it, especially not anything that would challenge the worldviews and prejudices they'd already spent so many years setting in stone.

Seriously, does a woman who can't come up with an answer better than "all of 'em" when asked a question as simple as "what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read" sound like she gives a flying fuck about becoming knowledgeable on the major issues of the day? Does she sound like someone interested in doing anything other than what Bush did as president -- i.e. bringing in "advisors" who will tell him/her exactly what he/she wants to hear and nothing more? Palin's legions of right-wing fans may not demand any more than that from her, because her willingness to "go with her gut" in the absence of any debate or time-consuming deliberation is one of the things they most admire in her, just as they admired it in Bush before her. But the rest of us, as evidenced by the 2008 election outcome, have come to our senses, and have started demanding a little more from the person who holds the most powerful title in the free world.

Evidently, even people in Alaska are starting to demand that as well, and that, as much as anything, is why she resigned so abruptly: The job got too hard, too many people didn't like her, she wasn't having fun anymore. So she quit, just like she quit a series of colleges and a position as head of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. She's going to lay low for a while, then write a book (or have one ghost-written for her) and probably get a talk show on Fox News, re-establish her position as the spokesperson for the great not-so-silent not-quite-majority of aggrieved Tea-Party-throwing, Obama-hating ultraconservatives without actually having to get elected to anything, and thereby become the only thing she ever really wanted to be all along: a celebrity.

Is that an overly harsh assessment? Probably, but as hard as I try, I just can't find one shred of evidence that Palin has any stomach for the difficult and sometimes spirit-sapping work of actual policy-making, consensus-building, or governing. Leave out the sob stories about catty Vanity Fair articles or tasteless jokes late-night talk-show hosts have made about her kids; in the end, that stuff's got very little to do with actual politics. It's got more to do with the travails of simply being a celebrity, and while Sarah Palin may look like she's selflessly falling on her sword and giving up the limelight for the good of her family or her state or whoever, she'll be back. Only as a pricey lecture-circuit choir-preacher or Fox talking head, of course, not as someone poised to make any direct, tangible difference in what goes on in Washington.

But that just kind of makes the Saga of Sarah -- to the extent that there is one -- only that much more pointless and wasted in the end. You will have Sarah Palin to kick around anymore, sooner or later, but only if it's on her terms, and in a capacity where she doesn't actually have to put anything on the line. She'll say stupid things on big stages, people who should know better will give her more air time than she deserves, but in the end history won't remember her as anything even resembling a transformative figure; the Saga of Sarah won't end up being remembered as anything more than a year in its political life that America won't ever get back.

Somebody make sure Tina Fey's on retainer.

I, for one, think that the nation's Republican-identified voters have a magnificent plan:

Coming off a shellacking at the polls in November, the plurality of GOP voters (43%) say their party has been too moderate over the past eight years, and 55% think it should become more like Alaska Governor Sarah Palin in the future, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Just 24% think failed presidential candidate John McCain is the best future model for the party, and 10% are undecided.

Uh-huh. See this chart of the 2008 presidential tracking polls?



See the part where John McCain peaks in early September and begins dropping back down into the low forties? The beginning of that slide occurs within a couple days of Sarah Palin's first unscripted TV interview, the "In what way, Charlie?" interview with ABC's Charles Gibson. The slide in Palin's personal favorability ratings is documented, among other places, here and here. There is no evidence whatsoever that Palin helped the GOP ticket among any group except the conservative evangelicals who weren't going to vote for a Democrat anyway, and while I guess the case can be made that Palin helped turn out ultra-conservative voters who were otherwise sketchy on the prospect of voting for McCain, that still left the Republicans nearly 10 million votes short of retaining the White House, didn't it?

But this is the person that Republicans say their party should be more like. Hey, good luck with that. I was figuring on working for Barack Obama's re-election campaign in 2012, but if the GOP is that determined to become more Palin-like, maybe I can just take a two-month-long vacation in September and October instead. (Season-long Georgia road trip? I think you hear me knockin', and I think I'm comin' in.)

The Friday Not-So-Random Ten+5 advises you not to let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya.

All the shouting over the past few days has been about Barack Obama's election to the presidency, but it's important to remember that there were also 470 Congressional races in play on Tuesday, and while the Democrats didn't have quite the massive sweep they did two years ago, they did pick up a bunch of seats -- at least 18 in the House (with votes still being counted in eight races) and at least six in the Senate (with one seat in Alaska still undecided and two more in Georgia and Minnesota headed for a runoff, Minnesota still being recounted, and Georgia headed for a runoff). And more than a few people who lost on Tuesday are folks we can all be very happy are no longer befouling our legislative process in Washington. This week's Not-So-Random Ten+5 happily bids them good riddance with the Five People In Congress I'm Most Thrilled To Be Rid Of In 2008:



Rep. Tim Walberg (MI-07)
If you earn the endorsement of the Club for Growth, a radical anti-tax organization determined to keep this country in multitrillion-dollar debt for eons to come, that's a strike against you right there. Here are two more: suggesting that Baghdad is "as safe and cared for as Detroit" and pushing the long-discredited myth that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11. Walberg's either an idiot or just a total douche; in the interest of fairness, I'll let him choose which one.
Defeated by: Mark Schauer, minority leader in the Michigan state senate and founding board member of Battle Creek Habitat for Humanity.



Sen. Elizabeth Dole (NC)
There was a time when I never would've dreamed of putting Liddy Dole on a list like this -- she seemed so sweet and grandmotherly, and she did a good job as head of the American Red Cross. But after getting elected to the U.S. Senate in 2001 from North Carolina -- a state where she hadn't held permanent residence in more than 40 years -- she proceeded to do precisely jack squat, to the point where even fellow Republicans were grumbling about her lack of leadership. The final straw came late last month, when Dole, facing a closer challenge from her Democratic opponent than anyone expected, got desperate and released a repellent, if not downright slanderous, attack ad accusing that opponent of accepting a donation from an atheist group and implying that she was an atheist herself. For that offense, Liddy got exactly the punishment she deserved: losing her Senate seat and being sent home to grapple with a Viagra-juiced Bob Dole. Let that be a lesson to the rest of you.
Defeated by: North Carolina state senator Kay Hagan, who is not only not an atheist, but is in fact a Sunday-school teacher. (Incidentally, her Guilford County district is where Sarah Palin made her "pro-America parts of America" remark a few weeks ago; Guilford went for Barack Obama by a margin of 18 percentage points.)



Rep. Robin Hayes (NC-08)
Another brilliant Republican legislator from the Tarheel State, Hayes said at an October rally for John McCain in Concord, N.C., that "liberals hate real Americans that work and achieve and believe in God." Later, he denied he said it, and then when someone came up with an audio recording of him saying it, he denied that he denied he said it. While you're trying to figure all that out, Rob, howsabout we find someone to take over your legislatin' duties for a little while.
Defeated by: Former textile worker Larry Kissell, who lost to Hayes two years ago by a margin of just 329 votes.



Rep. Bill Sali (ID-01)
You've got to be a baaaad Republican candidate to lose to a Democrat in ultra-conservative Idaho, and make no mistake, Bill Sali was a baaaad candidate -- so bad, in fact, that it's shocking he even got elected in the first place: Both his predecessor in the 1st District and his soon-to-be-colleague from the 2nd District publicly ridiculed him during his first run for Congress, and the Republican speaker of the Idaho House, where Sali served for eight terms, called him "an absolute idiot." Sounds about right: Earlier this year, Sali supported massive deforestation in his home state by saying that there "could be up to 40 barrels of oil" in each tree.
Defeated by: Walt Minnick, a staff assistant to Richard Nixon turned Democrat and entrepreneur.



Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (CO-04)
Quite simply, one of the most worthless members of Congress in history. In three terms as a national legislator, she focused pretty much exclusively on two "issues": restricting the rights of homosexuals, and trying to force her Pentecostal beliefs on as many people as possible. In 2006, with the country still mired in two overseas wars, Musgrave called gay marriage "the most important issue that we face today." Through it all, she weathered numerous controversies over her campaign funding, including the fact that she got $30,000 from Tom DeLay's PAC and refused to either return the money or donate it to charity. The entire country is better off for no longer having this silly, ignorant, petty woman involved in its legislative process.
Defeated by: Betsy Markey, who worked in both the Treasury and State departments under Reagan and who founded a successful software company upon entering the private sector.

And now, a Not-So-Random Ten to mark this historic election:

1. Tears for Fears, "Change"
2. Public Enemy, "Brother's Gonna Work It Out"
3. The Chambers Brothers, "Time Has Come Today"
4. The Streets, "Let's Push Things Forward"
5. Deee-Lite, "Vote Baby Vote"
6. Bobby Darin, "I'm Beginning to See the Light"
7. BT, "Embracing the Future"
8. Massive Attack, "Better Things"
9. Talking Heads, "What a Day That Was"
10. Trey Parker, "America, Fuck Yeah"

Your turn to put your own Random or Not-So-Random Tens in the comments, along with any personally satisfying victories or moments from the '08 election. (And here's to a Sarah Palin nomination in '12.)

Results.

With ninety-six percent of precincts nationwide reporting, I declare America the winner of this election.

Tuesday Selections.

CHRIS FOWLER: We're back with "College Gameday" live from the Mall in our nation's capital, and it's time for Tuesday Selections. Let's start just to the south of us in Virginia, where it's a battle of two former governors, Republican Jim Gilmore and Democrat Mark Warner. Fellas, who do you like?

KIRK HERBSTREIT: Well, it's really no contest here, the Democrats have been fired up to take this seat ever since John Warner announced his retirement, and I think what you're gonna see is Mark Warner reaching across the line to stress his moderate credentials and his record on education. Gilmore really hurt himself during his term as governor by focusing too heavily on eliminating the state car-tag tax at the expense of a lot of other things, so I think Warner wins big today. Big.

LEE CORSO: Forgettabouttit! Here's a stat that'll blow your mind -- you know how much of a budget shortfall Gilmore left behind when he left office in 2001? Five hundred million. That's half a billion dollars, my friend. It ain't gonna be close. Warner, all the way.

FOWLER: All right, so we've got a consensus pick on that one -- let's head down to the 21st District of south Florida, the Fightin' 21st, where incumbent Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart is in a dogfight with Democrat Raul Martinez. Guys, who's your pick?

HERBSTREIT: Martinez has one of the better ground games in that part of the country, and he's done an excellent job of turning out early voters in Miami. It's gonna be close, because Cuba has remained a big issue down there even with Castro fading off into the sunset, but Martinez has energized a lot of people, and it's been a down year for the GOP in general -- Martinez, close. Close.

CORSO: Not so fast, my friend! Listen, I grew up down there in Florida, and let me tell you something, they haven't forgotten about Castro down there, and they ain't never gonna forget about him. Now, this district's changing, but a hard line on Cuba is still the way to go, so I'm saying Diaz-Balart hangs on against the challenger.

FOWLER: All right, both of you see a close game down there, but you're picking it different ways. Out in Minnesoooota, we've got another bar-room brawl of a Senate race between Republican Norm Coleman, the incumbent, and former "Saturday Night Live" writer and cast member Al Franken. Lot of bad blood between these two, and Franken has definitely been stirring the pot over the past few weeks. Will his celebrity be enough to get him over the top in this one?

CORSO: You bet! See, the problem with most challengers in Senate races is nobody knows who they are. But Franken's got great name recognition, plus he's riding those coattails of Barack Obama out in a state that Republicans haven't taken since -- hel-lo! -- 1972! Hel-lo! You wanna know how long ago that was? I was coaching at Louisville then. Al Franken's gonna ride those Obama coattails and upset Coleman in Minnesota.

HERBSTREIT: Coattails, huh?

CORSO: Coattails, baby! You got it!

HERBSTREIT: Well, he's definitely got some coattails to ride in that state, but if I'm in the Franken campaign, what I'm worried about is a kind of variation on the "Bradley effect" where people tell the pollsters they're voting Democratic, but then they get into the voting booth and they start thinking, "Jeez, you know, can I really vote for a guy who played Stuart Smalley on 'SNL'?" This is another close one, this race has been neck-and-neck almost ever since Franken announced, but again, his opponent has that bipartisan record, and I think Coleman hangs on to win a second term.

FOWLER: "Bradley effect," huh? Whipping out a little bit of that poli-sci knowledge you picked up at The Ohio State University, I see. OK, here's one that's been flying under the radar a little bit: the at-large House seat in Alaska.

CORSO and HERBSTREIT: Ooooo!

FOWLER: Now, all the talk in the 49th state has been about two people: Sarah Palin, who of course was named John McCain's vice-presidential pick back in September, and Ted Stevens, the sitting U.S. Senator recently convicted on corruption charges. But Representative Don Young has been under investigation himself for taking bribes from an oil-pipeline company, so there's a lot of distractions swirling around as he goes up against Democratic challenger Ethan Berkowitz. Can Young fight through all the distractions and win for the nineteenth straight time?

HERBSTREIT: Well, you're right, there have been a ton of distractions in this race, not just the FBI investigation but the whole "Bridge to Nowhere" thing that he was right at the center of. Even with Palin being selected to the VP spot, all of Young's off-the-Hill issues have really become an embarrassment to this state and this delegation, enough that I think the Democrats finally break the streak here and pull off a win. Berkowitz's poll numbers have been phenomenal down the stretch.

CORSO: Lemme tell you something I learned many, many times as both a player and a coach: Never mess with a streak. You just don't do it! Now, Young's got problems, but that "Bridge to Nowhere" ain't one of 'em -- people up there in Alaska love their pork-barrel projects! They love 'em! And they see Young as an independent, stick-it-to-'em kind of guy, and they like that. This'll be the closest race Don Young has fought in a long, long time, but I ain't messing with the streak, I'm goin' with Young, nineteen in a row, over the Democrats.

FOWLER: All right, some nice disagreement on that one, and Coach, you're saying Young's problems, he might actually be able to turn them into a positive up there in the Last Frontier. All right, we've come to the big one, the reason we're here in Washington today, the presidential race, Barack Obama versus John McCain. Both of these guys come into this race battle-tested: They fought off very tough primary challenges -- Obama from Sen. Hillary Clinton, McCain from a pair of governors, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney -- and this race has gotten nasty down the stretch. The general consensus seems to be that Obama's going to be in control here, but things have tightened up a little bit these last couple weeks -- guys, time to make your selection: Obama versus McCain. Who's your pick?

HERBSTREIT: Well, these are two very talented, very well-liked guys, and they're pretty equal in their strengths and weaknesses -- Obama is young, he doesn't have a lot of experience, but that may not end up being that big a problem in what, again, is a really down year for the incumbent party. And when two candidates are this close, you go to matchups, and I think one of the biggest mismatches that Obama has been able to exploit in this campaign is at the VP position, Senator Joe Biden versus Governor Sarah Palin. Palin was one of the top recruits in the country when McCain tapped her to be his "running mate of the future," and there was all this buzz about her in the beginning, but she's really fallen off over the last few weeks, and you're starting to see some of her weaknesses exposed. She's not good in one-on-one interviews, she's been slow to pick up McCain's playbook on foreign policy, and her attempts to attract female voters, surprisingly, have backfired because those voters don't see her as qualified. Now, Biden isn't a guy who's gonna win a lot of races for you, but he's not gonna lose a lot of them for you, either: He's experienced, he attracts those voters who would otherwise be hostile to Obama, and his mistakes have been a lot less costly than Palin's. That's a big part of why I'm picking Barack Obama to win today -- I'm gonna say by at least seven points, maybe even more.

CORSO: Double-not-so-fast, my friend! Palin's still a raw, untested recruit at the VP slot, but she's already become the emotional leader of that ticket, getting the base fired up and really sticking it to Obama on some of his positions and his prior connections. But the matchup I'm really looking at here is tax-cut proposals. Barack Obama has been coming out fast and furious on this one, proposing a tax cut that would benefit 95 percent of American households. Ninety-five percent! Man! Now, on the other hand, McCain wants to continue the Bush tax cut for top wage earners and throw in an additional coporate tax cut. You kiddin' me? At a time when everybody's mad at Wall Street for the bailout? Forgettabouttit! I know who I'm pickin' . . .



CORSO: YES WE CAN!!! YES WE CAN!!!!

FOWLER: Coach Corso, with the surprise pick, as always. Folks, that's "College Gameday" for this Election Day morning, stay tuned to Mark Jones and Bob Davie with the Elizabeth Dole-Kay Hagan Senate race, plus Bachmann-Tinklenberg, live from Minnesota on the Deuce. We'll see you later on tonight -- don't forget to vote.

The final push.

Contrary to the impression I'm sure I've given a lot of you, I am neither a knee-jerk liberal nor a straight-ticket Democratic voter; I've never voted a straight ticket in my life. And in fact, the first vote I ever cast in a primary election was for John McCain, when I was living in Virginia in 2000.

I voted for McCain not only because I thought he was a better and more thoughtful candidate than George W. Bush on the Republican side, I did so because I was giving serious thought to voting for him in the general election. Not that I didn't like Al Gore, but for a while it seemed like there was a little too much of the old running-because-he's-the-VP-and-that's-what's-expected-of-him motivation to his campaign, not because he had a passionate vision for the country. (Now, of course, I know better.) With his moderate stances on most issues and a reputation for working across the aisle, McCain seemed like the kind of person who could help heal the bitterly partisan wounds of the impeachment mess that was still so fresh in everyone's minds at that point.

Fast-forward eight years, of course, and McCain had dropped many of his moderate views and his status as a maverick willing to fly in the face of his party's leadership; as we've heard so many times throughout this campaign, he supported Bush on the Iraq war, flipped his stance to match Bush's on tax cuts, veered to his right on social issues, and a host of other things. Based on all that, I had a pretty good idea I wasn't going to be voting for him this time around. But when he got the nomination in the spring, I was still a little happy about that: For the first time in a while, we weren't going to have to pick from the lesser of two evils. Instead of a pair of mediocrities, we'd have two men of integrity, both with clearly contrasting visions of where they wanted to take this country. At a time when the country desperately needed a new set of ideas of where to go next, it looked like we'd actually get two good options.

Except Obama brought his, and McCain didn't.

Aside from staying in Iraq, lowering corporate taxes, and "Drill baby drill" -- incidentally, a carbon copy of what George W. Bush would be running on right now were he permitted by the Constitution to seek a third term -- I could not tell you a single idea McCain has bothered to propose, a single piece of his vision for how this country needs to move on from eight years of the Bush administration. There have only been attacks on Obama; there have been no ideas that didn't amount to glorified bumper-sticker slogans, no actual policy discussions that McCain didn't look like he was dragged into kicking and screaming. And even when McCain and his running mate did finally deign to discuss actual policy in the waning weeks of the campaign, it was simply to brand Obama as a "socialist" -- for wanting to do nothing more than make the highest tax bracket pay the rate they were paying eight years ago, back before Bush decided it was OK to burden my grandchildren with a crushing 14-figure national debt.

Where Obama offered a plan for disengaging from Iraq, McCain and his surrogates merely questioned Obama's loyalty, both to America and to Israel. Where Obama presented a way to get started on the road to universal health-care coverage, McCain and his surrogates whined about ACORN. Where Obama explained in great detail his plan to re-establish some sanity to our system of progressive taxation, McCain and his surrogates fed us a steady diet of Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers. Look, I'm not saying that I have any affinity whatsoever for either of those two individuals, nor that I think Barack Obama's prior associations with them hold anything positive for his campaign. But to believe that Obama internalized every last extremist belief of Wright or Ayers, you'd have to believe the man is completely incapable of thinking for himself. To believe that those two men held Sen. Obama in such thrall that he is now committed to making their respective worldviews the law of the land, you would have to believe that Obama hates me because I'm white; that his hatred for the white power structure in this country is so caustic that he sympathizes with those who would do harm to America; and, probably, that he thinks America is wicked enough to have deserved 9/11. You would have to be a profoundly paranoid and extreme individual to believe any of those things, much less all of them, and yet two people who openly proclaimed that last belief -- Revs. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson -- are two men whose blessing John McCain, not Barack Obama, sought during the course of this campaign.

Moreover, you would have to believe that a great number of Obama's supporters are driven by that same kind of anti-American mistrust and resentment. Think I'm being melodramatic? Go back and observe the rhetoric that has become a staple of the McCain campaign over the past few weeks: Sarah Palin's professed affinity for "real America" and "the pro-America areas of this great nation," presumably to the exclusion of fake and anti-America areas she has yet to specify; Nancy Pfotenhauer's tossed-off delineation of "real Virginia" from, again, the presumably "fake" part of the state; and, of course, Michelle Bachmann shockingly expanding her mistrust of Obama to directly advocate McCarthyite investigations to determine if each member of Congress is "pro-America or anti-America." For a campaign that's spent so much time and energy pushing the idea that Barack Obama is an elitist who disdains large parts of this country, the McCain people have shown no qualms about disrespecting and casting suspicion upon large parts of it themselves.

And that is no way for a presidential hopeful to act; this country cannot afford a commander-in-chief who only wants to be president of certain parts of it. And for all the furor over Obama's "bitter" comments or his alleged contempt for "flyover country," he has proposed a tax cut that will benefit 95 percent of the households in this country, and he brought his message to places few Democrats have dared to tread -- Montana, Indiana, North Dakota, even Arizona -- so that those voters can gauge him as a politician and a man, look at his proposals on their own, and make up their minds independent of the stereotypes that are basically a political version of every bad late-night stand-up comic's shtick: "Blue states vote like this, red states vote like this."

Whereas once I had a great amount of respect for John McCain's independence and integrity, I now believe that his election would amount to a continuation of some of the worst trends that have come to define our society over the past eight years. It would mean four more years of Bush policies, of course; it would also mean four more years of ignorance and incuriosity -- of the kind symbolized by McCain's snide, reactionary panderer of a running mate -- being held up as some kind of a sacred blue-collar virtue (an idea that should be as big an insult to the intelligence of blue-collar Americans as it is to everyone else). But most importantly, and most damagingly, a McCain victory would mean at least four more years of an infuriating, arbitrary red/blue divide that is as big an obstacle to America's continued strength and prosperity as anything that some overseas terrorist cell could cook up. Ladies and gentlemen, we face two full-scale military operations overseas, a financial crisis at home of that rare severity that affects both "Joe Six-Pack" and Wall Street CEOs, and a looming energy crisis that hasn't gone away no matter how excited we are to be paying less than $3 a gallon for gas -- and if you think this country is capable of overcoming all those problems while we're all being categorized as "red" or "blue" and then pitted against one another like King Lear's daughters being asked to prove who loves their father the most, you have a profound misunderstanding of what this country is all about.

I don't believe John McCain is a bad person, but at a time when he should be coming up with ways to bring this country together, his campaign seems to be looking for new ways to divide us, and I can't vote for that. I'm not one of those straw-man Pollyanna cultists who supposedly believe that Barack Obama is going to wave his magic wand and make everything better on January 20; no matter how much he preaches unity in his stump speeches, there will still be people in this country who will take his message and people who will leave it. But at least Senator Obama has given us that choice. Rather than deciding for us who will be part of his vision and who won't get the privilege, he's put his message out there in a way that opens it up to everyone, and let us decide for ourselves whether we want to buy in.

Well, I'm buying in. And I hope you'll do the same.

Whoever you're planning on voting for, whether you've bought into Obama's vision or you haven't, I hope you're going to go out and vote tomorrow. If division is bad, apathy is almost as damaging, because it's what allows division and resentment to fester. Go to the polls tomorrow, stand in line as long as you have to, and perform a very simple act as your way of proclaiming that this country and how it's run are things that still matter.

ADDED: Two far more eloquent endorsements here and here.

Back in the saddle, the Friday Random Ten+5 is kicking names and taking ass. Wait . . .

After hitting the wall a little while back, the Friday Random Ten+5 is back with a vengeance with Five Things That Have Been Annoying The Crap Out Of Me At Multiple Instances Over The Last Few Weeks. Enjoy.



"Pundants"
This one has been going on for nearly the entirety of the presidential campaign season -- people saying "pundants" when they really mean "pundit." Even pundits themselves, supposedly intelligent people who are brought on TV to say trenchant things, are doing it. Note to everybody both on TV and off: There is no such thing as a "pundant," just as there is no such thing as a "nuke-you-ler" weapon or the word "irregardless." Stop mumbling.



Internet video that automatically starts when you open a page
When it comes to Internet video, I'm staunchly pro-choice: I want to choose whether I want to watch a certain video, rather than the site automatically starting it for me and shoving it in my face the minute I open the page. I can't tell you how many times, over the course of football season, I've opened up a game recap or something on ESPN.com to research something for the blog, and all of a sudden I start hearing voices and music that aren't coming from the TV and I'm like, "DAMMIT, WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!?" And it turns out it's another one of those little ESPN highlight videos, starting right up without letting me get a word in edgewise. Seriously, guys, enough. I'm a savvy Internet user, I know how to push the "play" button. And don't even get me started on the porn sites that do the same thing.



Joe the Plumber
OK, we get it, you're a plumber. Well, you're not a licensed plumber, but we can't find anything else about you to hang your hat on, and you're built and live in Ohio and kind of have that tough-guy Vic Mackey look about you, so we'll turn you into our symbol of what "Joe Six-Pack" looks like and trot you out like a show dog all over the country without first bothering to check whether you have anything even remotely original or insightful to say. (Actually, that's pretty much the same level of thought that went into the selection of Sarah Palin as VP, so it's starting to make a little more sense.) And now it turns out Joe's just a big political pussy, throwing out accusations like how Obama will bring about "the death of Israel" and then punting when asked to explain exactly why he feels that way. I'm no more interested in what Joe the Not-Actually-Plumbing-Anything-At-The-Moment Plumber has to say than I am in anything Paris Hilton has to say, although in its own way, I guess that's a valuable lesson right there: that salt-of-the-earth blue-collar workers from Middle America can be every bit as vapid and worthless as airheaded blond Hollywood heiresses. I'm really glad we finally got that straightened out.



Unflushed toilets
I can't tell you how many times I've walked into the public restroom on my own floor in my own office building and found a big ol' nasty brown trout or the unflushed remnants of same in one of the commodes. Flushing a toilet is not a lengthy, involved process, people. If you can open a car door, click a mouse, or masturbate for five seconds, congratulations, you've mastered the dexterity necessary to operate a modern-day flush toilet. The people who annoy me the most are the ones who are afraid of touching any part of a public commode because "It's gross and I'll get my hands dirty" -- the only reason that would be a concern for you is if you weren't planning on washing your hands before you left the restroom anyway, in which case you're the dirty, disgusting restroom user, not anyone else. It's almost enough to make me wish people had to sign in to use a bathroom stall so that if someone walks in and sees a floater, they could just check the last name on the list and then put a reprimand in that guy's personnel file.



These shoes
A couple weeks ago my sister sent me a link to the atrocities pictured above, which combine the two dumbest recent trends in footwear -- Crocs and furry mukluk-style boots -- into one ass-ugly pair of shoes. So what would you call them? Mukluk Crocs? Or Croc mukluks? Either way, I can only hope that they're aimed at airhead pre-teens who are too dumb to know better, because if I see anyone over the age of majority wearing these, I might have to take 'em down. Just long enough to pull their shoes off and burn them, of course.

Hooray, I'm glad I got all that off my chest. And now the Ten:

1. Pet Shop Boys, "Flamboyant" (Scissor Sisters silhouettes & shadows mix)
2. David Holmes, "Radio 7"
3. Talk Talk, "Talk Talk"
4. Gorillaz, "19-2000"
5. The Chemical Brothers, "The Sunshine Underground"
6. Genesis, "Throwing It All Away"
7. Crystal Waters, "Gypsy Woman (She's Homeless)"
8. Sting, "This Cowboy Song"
9. R.E.M., "Let Me In"
10. The Roots, "The Spark"

Put your own Random Tens and/or list of grievances in the comments, folks, and enjoy the weekend.

An open letter to Nancy Pfotenhauer.

Dear Nancy,

I may claim Alabama as my current place of residence and Georgia as my alma mater, but Virginia is technically my home state, the place where I was born. I popped out of my mother's uterus at Roanoke Memorial Hospital, lived there until I was about two and a half, spent another five years down the road in Radford, lived in Lynchburg for a year where I had my first job out of college. My dad was born in Richmond and my mom was born in Fredericksburg; mom's side of the family still resides on their family farm in Caroline County, and my dad still has siblings and nieces and nephews from the D.C. suburbs all the way down I-81 to Blacksburg. So I think I know the state pretty well.

Well enough, in any case, to ask you: Who the hell do you think you are, dividing my home state into "real Virginia" and (I'm inferring here) fake Virginia like that?

You attended George Mason University for grad school and, as you said, currently live in Fairfax County; I've been unable to locate any evidence that you've ever set foot in what you call "real Virginia" at all. So let me tell you a little bit about this part of the state, the part that I grew up in. Last week, more than 10,000 people came out in the driving rain in Roanoke -- yup, my birthplace, down in that southwest part of the state -- to hear Barack Obama speak. In Lynchburg, home of the late Jerry Falwell's ministry and university, I still keep in touch with friends and former co-workers who intend to vote for Obama. And over in the rolling hills of Caroline County, Tidewater farming country, I've got relatives who get up at 5 a.m. to feed the cows, work hard, and go to church every Sunday -- and they didn't vote for Bush in 2004 and have shown no intention of voting for McCain this year.

Meanwhile, up in that northern part of the state you tossed off as the breeding ground of a bunch of D.C. carpetbaggers, I have other relatives who are also regular churchgoers, who raised their families well and are now seeing that effort reflected in a new generation as their kids raise beautiful, stable families of their own -- the kinds of values I'm guessing you so highly prize in those "real Virginians" you've only ever seen on TV. They've worked hard to make good lives for themselves and are just as worried as the folks in Roanoke and Bowling Green and Radford about how the economic crisis is going to affect them. And without naming names, I can think of specific relatives who will be voting for Obama this year, and other specific relatives who almost certainly won't be -- but that just goes to show you how not everybody in the state, even in that supposedly homogenous lump of D.C. expatriates in northern Virginia, is as easily categorized as you seem to think they are.

Four years ago, Ms. Pfotenhauer, people on your side of the aisle roundly criticized John Edwards for his "two Americas" rhetoric, calling it "divisive" and "class warfare" -- and now you're doing pretty much the exact same thing in an effort to dig a gap between Obama supporters and the hard-working, salt-of-the-earth types who live in rural areas and supposedly harbor more "traditional" values. You've been so busy digging that trench, though, that you've missed something important: Those two groups actually have a whole lot of people in common. In Virginia, for instance, every poll taken this month has shown Obama in the lead -- by double digits, according to the last Rasmussen poll, and I'm sorry, a margin that big can't consist solely of latte-sipping Fairfax County elites. In North Dakota, an almost entirely rural state that no Democrat has won since LBJ routed Goldwater in '64, the most recent poll showed Obama dead even with McCain. Georgia, where my parents still live, went for Bush by 17 points in 2004 but has only seen fit to give your guy a 5.4-point margin that's getting smaller by the day. And in Iowa -- a state that's both literally and figuratively about as close to Middle America as it's possible to get -- so many "real Americans" are supporting Obama that your campaign has evidently given up on campaigning there.

How did so many of these non-big-city-living, non-carpetbagging, "real" Americans -- the kind of folks whom, if I understand you correctly, you're sort of counting on to carry John McCain to victory -- end up in Obama's column? I'm not Larry Sabato and I don't have a political-science degree, but I'll hazard a guess: Instead of addressing health care or talking frankly about taxes or coming up with a plan for energy independence any more substantial than "drill baby drill" -- all of which Obama has done, incidentally -- you guys have apparently been spending your time in the back of the Straight Talk Express, hunched over a U.S. map, drawing what I can only imagine are fantastically intricate lines to separate fake America, the part from which you don't seek any support, from the "real" parts. While Obama has been talking issues, you've been picking out certain isolated pockets of the country -- not regions, not even states, but evidently parts of states -- where name-dropping Bill Ayers and tossing off tired old scare words like "socialist" will do the most damage.

Seriously, Ms. Pfotenhauer, has it not sunk in yet that that isn't working? I mean, I can't even begin to hazard a guess as to how many voters live in what you define as "real Virginia" or "real America" or whatever else, but clearly it isn't as many as you thought there were, or else you wouldn't be behind in the polls right now. You've got a lot of ground to make up and a lot of minds to change if you're going to win, so maybe now's the time to stop spending so much energy picking out the "real" Americans and start building a vision that resonates with all Americans. You know, kind of like Barack Obama's been trying to do.

Look, I'm not naive -- I know there are big differences between northern and southern Virginia, just like there are differences between Los Angeles and Lower Alabama, Manhattan (New York) and Manhattan (Kansas), etc. etc. etc. But the fact remains, all those places are still going to have only one president come November 5. If John McCain only wants to be president of part of it, he's going to end up president of none of it -- which is exactly what someone with that kind of mindset deserves.

Now I've got to get back to work, where I won't be dwelling on whether Hollywood celebrities are warping my mind or whether latte-sipping New Yorkers like fried chicken or college football as much as I do; I'll be dwelling on doing my job and hoping that our shrinking state budget permits me to still have one come tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that. I'm willing to bet there are people in both northern Virginia and "real" Virginia who are having the same worries right about now -- maybe you should spend a little more time focusing on those universal types of issues than on trying to figure out which Virginian is which.

Sincerely,
Doug Gillett

Rage we can believe in.

I watched the third and final presidential debate last night, as well as this video while I was drinking my coffee this morning . . .



. . . and I couldn't quite put my finger on which character McCain reminded me of. But as I was walking into the office this morning, it finally occurred to me:

The debate rules.

· Every time Sarah Palin refers to herself as a "reformer," take a drink.

· Every time Joe Biden gets warned by Gwen Ifill that he's gone over his allotted response time, take a drink.

· Every time Palin mentions her special-needs child, take a drink.

· If she makes reference to "cracks in the glass ceiling" in any amount, take a drink.

· If she mentions Hillary Clinton while doing so, take two drinks.

· If Biden responds by saying, "Governor, I work with Hillary Clinton. I know Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton is a friend of mine. Governor, you're no Hillary Clinton," do a tequila shot in celebration.

· Every time Palin looks up, smiles, and says "You knowwww . . . " in a way that says there's an irrelevant personal story or really-stretching-it joke coming up, drink.

· If she tells that fucking story about putting the airplane on eBay, chug your drink.

· For every time she claims to have said "Thanks but no thanks" to the Bridge to Nowhere, chug someone else's drink, and if they ask what happened to their drink, say you have no idea, you don't drink.

· For every time she claims to have foreign-policy experience, take a drink.

· If she invokes Alaska's proximity to Russia in doing so, take another drink (a vodka shot, of course).

· For every time either candidate says "I agree with [opponent]," take a drink.

· If Biden slips up and calls Gov. Palin "little lady," do a shot, then shoot yourself in the head.

· For every time a pundit says Palin "held her own" in the post-debate analysis, take a drink.

· If one of those pundits says Palin "proved she's qualified to be vice-president," start drinking and don't stop until November 5.

A memo from the desk of Arnold T. Pants, Esq.:People without maps, orange outfits, busted Trojans, and other profiles in FAIL.

• The Sarah Palin bandwagon is beginning to unload, as right-wing columnist Kathleen Parker comes forward to say Palin should step down from the ticket. Well, there are plenty of equally qualified replacements out there . . . how does McCain/Upton '08 sound?





I guess I shouldn't make fun, though, since John McCain has already won tonight's debate.

• Apropos of nothing, a writer for knoxnews.com in Knoxville, Tennessee, read some comment I made on this blog about Tennessee fans' tacky gameday attire and was actually inspired to solicit my opinion for an article he was writing on that very subject. I think it says something about Volunteer Nation's current mental state that they didn't immediately fill up the comments thread with angry questions about why anyone would solicit some pansy-ass Georgia fan's opinion on Tennessee's fashion sense; the first comment ("fitting, considering our team plays a relaxed style of football") pretty much sets the tone.

What this means for Georgia? Precisely dick, thanks for asking, since UT fans were (if memory serves) just as demoralized about this time last year right up until the Dawgs strolled into Neyland Stadium and got Keyser Söze'd by the eventual SEC East champs. (Keenan Ivory Wayans pops his head in through the window: "Message!")

• In other adventures in cross-promotion, my Dr. Saturday picks column is up. Trying for a perfect 4-0 after a pretty nice 3-1 record last week.

• In the Georgia preview I did for Deadspin over the summer, I made reference to the informal headline contests we'd have back in college whenever the Dawgs beat up on the 'Cocks of South Carolina. Well, the headline possibilities are certainly just as boundless whenever the Beavers face the Trojans, and even more so when the Beavers come out with a shocking upset win. ESPN's own headline ranks pretty high on the Unintentional Hilarity-O-Meter, but something like this calls for a little intentional hilarity as well, so . . . take it away, Holly:

Trojans Can’t Pull It Out

Hungry Beavers Suffocate Trojans

Trojans Can’t Get It Up For Big Night With Beavers

Sanchez Dirtied By Beaver Attack

Trojans Can’t Come From Behind, Fall Short

22 Trojans, No Protection

I would say "It gets even more out of hand in the comments," but that would imply that it was ever in hand to begin with. My personal contribution, "Trojans Break Under Pressure of Too Much Jacquizz," pays tribute to freshman RB Jacquizz Rodgers's 186-yard, two-TD performance; I welcome your suggestions in the comments.

This is as good a time as any to reiterate my support for a home-and-home between South Carolina and Oregon State. Intersectional Game of the Century? I don't think that's too much premature exaggeration, no.

• And finally, the 17 All-Time Worst "ESPN Gameday" signs. I actually thought the Goulet one was kind of funny.

I think I love you, so what am I so afraid of . . .

Tina Fey as Sarah Palin: Quite possibly even more perfect than Scarlett Johansson in a Hooters uniform, and the fact that we saw it coming weeks ago doesn't make it any less awesome.



Not to exaggerate or anything, but I'd put this video in the top 10 of mankind's greatest achievements throughout all of human history, right below Zaxby's chicken fingers and just above the polio vaccine. What say you?

The RNC, summarized.

So basically, this is the Republican ticket in 2008: a "maverick" who votes with President Bush 90 percent of the time and a "reformer" who raked pork money into Alaska by the hundreds of millions and hired a lobbying firm connected to indicted Sen. Ted Stevens to figure out how to get more.

Heckuva job, GOP.

(Hat tip on the cartoon: Andrew Sullivan.)

He's gonna want that one back.

Somebody please direct me to a YouTube of Mike Huckabee's speech tonight at the Republican National Convention so I can prove that Huckabee actually said this:

“I was in college before I figured out that it wasn't supposed to hurt when you take a shower.”

I think he was referring to his family being too poor to afford soap when he was young. But regardless, the Funniest Unintentional Innuendo of 2008 competition is basically over.

Sympathy for the devil.

If anyone needed any more proof as to what a menace John McCain would be to this country, consider this: He's actually making people -- myself included -- feel sorry for the Hilton family.

I mean, I've expressed as much contempt for Paris Hilton on this blog as anybody out there, but over the past few days I've been trying to put myself in Richard Hilton's shoes. If I'd dumped tens of thousands of dollars into the McCain campaign and the RNC, only to have McCain turn around and slag off my own daughter (spoiled whore though she may be) in a national TV ad, I'd want to punch Captain Maverick in the face.

But unlike me, Paris has decided not to get mad but to get even. Holy fuck, does that mean Paris Hilton is a better person than me? While I ponder whether it's wrist-slitting time, watch this, assuming you haven't seen it 20 times already:

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

The big caveat with Paris's "plan," of course, is that offshore drilling won't "carry us until" anything, since it'd take at least 10 years for the first drops of oil to begin spurting from those coastal oil rigs (and even then it'd be unlikely to drop our gas prices by more than a few pennies per gallon). Otherwise, though, it's not bad, and I'm not the only one who thinks so:

Watching the Hilton video, a few questions came to mind. First, why is that Paris Hilton’s fake ad includes more substantive talk about energy policy than John McCain’s real ad? Second, if writers helped Hilton with her script, and writers helped McCain with his script, why is it that Hilton seems to have a better grasp on policy details than McCain does? Shouldn’t that be, you know, the other way around? And third, why is it that a 27-year-old heiress/reality-show star can read a teleprompter better than the presumptive Republican presidential nominee?

I don't know that I have the wherewithal to answer any of those questions at the moment, because I'm still trying to grapple with the fact that, for the first time that I can remember, I might actually like Paris Hilton.

See what you've done, Walnuts? Damn you, John McCain. Damn you to hell.

The Friday(-slash-weekend) Random Ten+5 is so over it.

OK, I know this week's +5 is ground I've covered before to some extent, but when you're in kind of a bad mood -- and boy howdy, was I in a bad mood today, at least until I had the werewithal to stave off looming insanity by cramming some Ruby Minis down my piehole at lunchtime -- it's a well that's definitely worth going back to. So here's Five More Things That Just Need To Stop, Right Now, This Instant.



Television news reports on viral videos
If there's one thing that makes me want to put my foot through the television screen when it's not football season, it's networks like CNN wasting valuable screen time on stories like "Check out which viral video is sweeping the nation!" Hey, guess what: If such-and-such video has gotten a bazillion hits on YouTube, then chances are we already know about it, because we're the ones who helped jack their hit count up to a bazillion in the first place. That isn't always the case, of course; I didn't know about the above video or "Fred," the character "starring" in it, until CNN did a story on "Fred" a few weeks ago. But that begs the question, did I need to know about it? Is it vitally important that I be apprised of which stupid thing the nation's tweener girls find irresistible this week? Maybe that's a story you should consider doing instead, CNN: "Is every girl in America between the ages of 11 and 16 a complete retard? We investigate . . . after this." Maybe you could work on that instead of weeing your pants over whatever JibJab next craps out onto the Intertubes.



Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer
I had the weirdest experience this past Saturday: Rght before a showing of the movie "Hancock," they showed a preview for the forthcoming film "Disaster Movie," and in that preview was a scene parodying "Hancock." We were already watching a preview of a movie satirizing the very movie we had just sat down to watch. WTF? Then it occurred to me: This film was created by the same pair of smarmy dicklicks who inflicted "Date Movie," "Epic Movie," and "Meet the Spartans" on the filmgoing public. Basically, the Friedberg/Seltzer method is to write down every remotely satirizable film or pop-culture phenomenon of the past 12 months, throw it all in a blender, hit "liquefy," and film whatever comes out. I'm sure it's a great moneymaking scheme, but it makes for a fucking awful comedy; even the two-minute preview was about as much fun as a body-cavity search. The whole time I was like, "Am I being too blatant in my contempt for this movie? Does that make me kind of an asshole? Should I let out a chuckle, just to make it clear I'm not a humorless assw -- oh, hell no, they did not just lift 30 seconds of dialogue verbatim from 'You Don't Mess With the Zohan.' Fuck this, no way am I laughing now." Somebody needs to kidnap them and tie them up in an abandoned factory so that Jim Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker can torture them in all kinds of horrific ways. And then I'll be like, "Don't worry, we're just spoofing 'Hostel.' It's satire, baby!"



Crocs
Jesus H. Christ, are we still not done with these?



Brett Favre
Dude, I hate to say this, because I loved you when you were with the Packers. I mean, not the kind of love I have for Mark Richt, whom I love as deeply as any one heterosexual man can love another heterosexual man, but still, you were awesome. So that just makes it all the more unfortunate that you're pulling this "I'm retired, oops, JK I'm not, now let me back on the team and get this Rogers pissant outta my face" act on us now. Not only are you tarnishing what was otherwise a damn near spotless legacy, you've set in motion a media machine that takes over the radio airwaves, the newspapers, the TV networks and the Intertubes every time you so much as take a crap. Peter King's happier than a pig in shit right now, I'm sure, but that doesn't mean it's any fun for the rest of us.



The whole Barack-Obama-as-an-arrogant-elitist-celebrity meme
John McCain had a made-for-TV movie made about him three years ago. He's had cameos on "24" and in the movie "Wedding Crashers"; he hosted "Saturday Night Live" in 2002 and appeared on the show again this year. He's pals with Warren Beatty and Arnold Schwarzenegger, while his daughter hangs out with Heidi Montag. He wears $520 Italian loafers while his wife, a beer-distributor heiress who's been known to charge as much as $500,000 a month on her credit cards, got her pilot's license and bought a Cessna Citation Excel because a private plane is supposedly "the only way to get around the state" of Arizona. Yet Barack Obama is the one who's supposedly an out-of-touch elitist who's obsessed with his own celebrity status. Uh-huh, sure, you betcha.

Ahhh. I feel a little better now. So here's the Ten:

1. A Tribe Called Quest, "Lyrics to Go"
2. Pet Shop Boys, "Was It Worth It?" (12" mix)
3. The Strokes, "Alone Together"
4. Love Jones, "Paid for Loving"
5. Common, "Chi City"
6. 10,000 Maniacs, "Few and Far Between"
7. The Farm, "News International"
8. 3rd Bass, "Sea Vessel Soliloquy"
9. Four Tet, "Everything is All Right"
10. Steely Dan, "Reeling in the Years"

Better late than never, it's your turn, folks. Your Random Tens and/or lists of shit that just needs to be given a rest go in the comments.

A memo from the desk of Arnold T. Pants, Esq.: Vorsprung durch Obama, font wars, and an obituary.

· With 0% of precincts reporting, Hey Jenny Slater is projecting Barack Obama the winner of the 2008 presidential race. I know, I know, that's awfully presumptuous on my part, but if this is the best the right wing can do against him, I think it's pretty much in the bag. (Hat tip: LGM.)



Yes, that's right: Barack Obama, who is giving a major speech today in Germany, is taking heat from this twit for printing handbills for the event in German. Oh noes!!!! This is the most embarrassing gaffe by an American politician overseas since Bill Clinton's trip to Rome in 1994, in which he shocked the nation by doing as the Romans did!

· Not only that, but Obama's picture on the flier is in profile, which as we all know makes him TEH HITLAR!!111!1!!1!!

· Maybe you have to have gone to journalism school or worked in some aspect of the publishing industry to find this funny -- either way, I'm sure it helps if you're a huge dork -- but I nearly cried with laughter watching this.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

My only quibble is with them choosing Comic Sans as the hero. NOBODY likes Comic Sans.



· Paul Westerdawg and Senator Blutarsky have both given us some interesting insights recently regarding the long-term psychological effects of "The Celebration" during last year's Georgia-Florida game. It really is hilarious hearing the Florida fans out there say things like "The Celebration didn't get in our heads" and "We're SO gonna remember this" in practically the same breath. A few months ago, I was almost kind of dreading this year's Cocktail Party, thinking that we might have kind of painted ourselves into a corner; given how many people's eyes are going to be on Georgia this year to see if we really have turned the tide in terms of making the UGA-UF rivalry competitive again, a big loss in this year's game could be even more disastrous than usual. But after reading the recent stuff from Westerdawg and Blutarsky, my mental glass is coming a lot closer to half-full; it's clear that the Celebration did get into the Gators' heads, whether they want to admit it or not, and the simple fact that they've been forced to give a shit about this rivalry again has as much potential to restore equilibrium as anything else.

Oh, and Urban Meyer is a jackbag. Referring to himself in the third person? Melodramatic statements like "it's going to be a big deal"? He's already starting to sound like those Georgia Tech knobs who were saying stuff like "Just remember, Richt, what goes around comes around" six years ago after the 51-7 game. And that, I believe, is inadvisable.

· Finally, please join me in mourning Practically Harmless, 4, whose feeding tube was removed last week. The blog is survived by one writer -- my sister -- and the job and boyfriend who are now occupying the majority of her time.

It's tough pulling the plug on a blog -- I've had to do it once or twice in my time -- but keeping a good blog regularly updated can be harder than it looks sometimes, and I respect anyone who has the fortitude to say "Sorry, guys, I'm hanging this up" rather than making a half-assed attempt at continuity after disappearing for three months by saying, "Uh, sorry I kind of fell off the face of the earth there, here's a video of a panda farting." The dirty secret in our family, though, is that Ann's been a better writer than me for a while now, at least as far as stuff not involving football, French newsreaders, or dick jokes. So hopefully she'll muster the mojo to take another crack at it one of these days.

Not that I'm trying to lean on you, sis.

Dr. Phil for secretary of state?

My parents are both Dr. Phil fans, and while I don't have any particular affinity for the guy, there is one phrase of his that I kind of like. Sometimes he'll be sitting there with his dysfunctional family du jour, and the mom will be talking about how her kids are a bunch of incorrigible shitheads with no respect for her or anyone else, and when Dr. Phil asks her why she's been doing X, Y, or Z to coddle, enable, or otherwise encourage the asinine behavior of her kids, she'll trot out the usual laundry list of excuses for why she's been doing what she's doing. And then Phil will lean down real close to her with his deadpan expression and ask, "So how's that working out for you now?"

I would love it if Dr. Phil could get Barack Obama and John McCain on his show sometime between now and November, because I hope there'd be an exchange like this:

DR. PHIL: Now, Senator Obama, you say you'd meet with foreign leaders, even those considered enemies of the United States, without preconditions, is that correct?

OBAMA: Yes, I feel that diplomacy and open dialogue between nations is the only way we're going to make any actual progress in solving international disputes and making the world a more secure place.

DR. PHIL: But now Senator McCain, you say you don't want to talk to those leaders without preconditions, or in some cases at all.

McCAIN: That's right, Phil.

DR. PHIL: Talk to me about that.

McCAIN: Phil, Senator Obama is talking about meeting with people like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who's talked about wiping Israel of the map and who is supporting the insurgents who are causing the violence and instability in Iraq right now. To agree to a meeting like that would lend legitimacy to an oppressive dictator.

DR. PHIL: So you're worried about guys like Ahmadinejad being "legitimized," and you also told me backstage that you're worried about him developing a nuclear program, is that right?

McCAIN: Absolutely. A nuclear-armed Iran would be an incredibly stabilizing force in the Middle East.

DR. PHIL: And you think we shouldn't be talking to countries like that.

McCAIN: That's right.

DR. PHIL: Well, Senator McCain -- how's that working out for you now?

John McCain has already come under plenty of well-deserved criticism for falling in line with too many of the Bush administration's policies, but this spat over differing foreign-policy platforms highlights just how thoroughly McCain has bought into maybe the most unfortunate theme of the Bush presidency: the idea that we have to keep doing something even when it's not working or in fact worsening the problems we were trying to solve in the first place. Maybe this is their idea of "steering into the skid," but as anyone with any actual winter-driving experience will tell you, "steering into the skid" does not mean "keep steering in the direction in which the car is skidding."

So now we have McCain saying that Iran has a dangerous dictator who's gaining power and developing a nuclear program, and the solution to this is to just ignore him -- exactly what we were doing the whole time he was gaining power and developing a nuclear program. Clearly, severing all diplomatic ties with Iran has neither stemmed the tide of violence in Iraq or slowed down Iran's nuclear ambitions, but in McCain's mind, that just means we need to keep on not talking to them.

McCain has said that Obama "needs to explain why he wants to sit down and talk with a man who is the head of a government that is a state sponsor of terror," but I think that should be plainly obvious -- not talking to them has done nothing to stem that state sponsorship of terror, so maybe talking to them will bring about some progress. It may not end up being effective, sure, but it certainly can't be any less effective than what we've already been doing. If anything, I think the burden should be on McCain to explain exactly what tangible benefits we've gotten from not talking to Iran, Syria, or whoever else these past few years, because I certainly don't see any.

I don't know why the neocons are so taken aback by the idea of an American president merely breathing the same air as someone like Ahmadinejad. They act like such a meeting would be completely unprecedented, but even five minutes' worth of Googling makes clear that that isn't true: Just take a look at the country that held the title of Biggest Threat To The United States before Iran stepped in, i.e. the Soviet Union. If being seen in public with our greatest enemy is such an anathema, what do you make of all these?


Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower with the Khrushchevs, 1959.


Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev at the fricking White House, 1973.


Gerald Ford and Brezhnev in Vladivostok, November 1974.


And here's that symbol of American strength, Ronald Reagan, with Gorbachev in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1985.

Somebody's surely going to come along and say, "Well, the USSR and Iran really aren't comparable situations." And they're right: The Soviet Union was far more dangerous to the U.S. then than Iran is now. The Soviets had hundreds of actual nuclear weapons pointed at us for the better part of 40 years; Iran has a nuclear program that might produce weapons at some indefinite point in the next five to ten.

Now, it bears pointing out that none of those presidential meetings on their own brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union as an opposing superpower; it took 40 years for that empire to finally kick over. But if the choice is between invading Iran now or sitting tight for the next four decades trying to hash out ways to not blow each other to pieces, then I'll take Barack Obama and the 40-year wait (particularly considering that if our adventure in Iraq is any indication, an all-out war might not keep us out of a 40-year commitment to begin with).

The first word that the neocons always seem to jump to when Obama talks about meeting with leaders of hostile foreign countries is "appeasement" -- as if Obama was going to offer them the title deed to Israel in exchange for not shooting at us, which only the most insane right-winger would think was an actual possibility. You know, I'm willing to concede that a meeting between Obama and Ahmadinejad might not make any concrete progress; maybe it becomes clear early on that the Iranians are negotiating in bad faith, or maybe the two sides just can't come to a compromise on how to handle X, Y, or Z. But even if that's what ends up happening, we at least tried, we got our issues out there on the table, and nobody got killed. So what's the fuss about? It's also worth pointing out that at neither the above-pictured Geneva summit nor at the Reykjavik summit a year later did Reagan and Gorbachev actually agree to disarm anything -- but they both laid the groundwork for future talks, and by Christmas 1991 the USSR was a memory.

Would the same thing happen with one of the dictators Obama wants to talk to? Who knows, but it's certainly more likely to happen his way than it is by what we're doing (or not doing) now. John McCain has issued a lot of tough-sounding talk in the service of maintaining the status quo, but not once has he articulated what good that's actually done us. It's a good thing for McCain that Dr. Phil is unlikely to be invited to be a moderator at any of this year's presidential debates, because if Phil ever did succeed in asking him the "How's that working out for you now" question, I think McCain would be at a complete loss to find an answer.