Monday Morning Cage Match XV:Two shaolin warriors with mystical powers square off.

Barack Obama has been compared to a lot of unsavory folks these days, from Hitler to Stalin to The Joker. Yet somehow nobody's thought to compare him to Baraka, the ugly dude with the arm blades from the old "Mortal Kombat" video games. As far as I'm aware, Barack has never vanquished a political opponent by decapitating him and shish-kebabbing his severed head -- just wait, though, one of Glenn Beck's radio listeners will accuse him of having done it before the week's out -- but it still seemed like a Monday Morning Cage Match worth staging: Barack vs. Baraka.

	Barack Obama	Baraka
Origin	Hawaii (OR SO HE SAYS)	A race of nomadic mutants called Tarkatan
WINNER: Barack
Looks a little like	Flip Wilson	Nosferatu
WINNER: Barack
Partner	Michelle Obama	Mileena
WINNER: Tie (Mileena wears hotter outfits, but Michelle has the advantage of not being a demon, no matter what Rush Limbaugh says)
Early success	Elected senator in Illinois	Led attack on Shaolin Temple of Light
WINNER: Baraka
Greatest victory	Defeated John McCain by earning 69.5 million votes in the 2008 election, becoming president of the United States	Defeated Shao Kahn by impaling him with an arm blade and throwing him off a pyramid, becoming ruler of Outworld
WINNER: Baraka
Greatest weapon	Unflappably cool demeanor	Three-foot-long blades protruding from his arms
WINNER: Baraka
Signature move	Saying/doing something completely reasonable, then sitting back and waiting while the fruitcake Glenn Beck wing of the GOP embarrasses the party by going inexplicably batshit over it	Stabbing enemies in the torso, lifting them over his head, and watching them twitch in agony as they slide down his arm blades
WINNER: Baraka

FINAL SCORE: Baraka 5, Barack 3. Icy cool and once-in-a-generation political instincts are no match for blades that can slice through a fricking human torso.

"We have become so politically correct that no one would even daaaare think about sending in the Marines to fight pirates . . . "

Well, Glenn Beck was right about one thing: We didn't send in the Marines. We sent in Navy SEALs.

If Beck (or Newt Gingrich, or Brit Hume, or any of those other Fox News dicklicks) are ever right about anything else, then by all means let me know. I wouldn't want to miss it.

In the meantime, hijack this, bitches. (Chart lovingly, painstakingly crafted over at Tiki Bar.)

Take me to your leader, whoever that is.

A little over a month ago, Rep. Phil Gingrey, a Republican from northwest Georgia, said that talk-radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh were just "stand[ing] back and throw[ing] bricks" while Republicans in Congress had to try and get real work done; within 24 hours, he was on Limbaugh's show expressing "very sincere regret" for those harsh words. Last week, Republican National Committee chairman and former Maryland lieutenant governor Michael Steele referred to Limbaugh as an "entertainer" and admitted that Limbaugh's rhetoric about "want[ing] Obama to fail" was "incendiary" and "ugly"; two days later, he, too, went groveling for Limbaugh's forgiveness. Yesterday, Limbaugh implied that House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.), despite statements seemingly to the contrary, agreed with him about wanting Obama to fail, and Cantor's office is remaining conspicuously silent about any clarifications.

So my honest, sincere question to the Republicans and small-c conservatives who stop by this site from time to time is: Is Rush Limbaugh really the guy you want as the spokesman for your party and/or ideology?

Yes, Limbaugh's show is, relatively speaking, extremely popular. Yes, he's a household name even amongst those who aren't fans. But let's not pretend that his 14,250,000 weekly listeners represent anything close to a majority of the American public. Even if I give him major benefit of the doubt and give him credit for having 14 million regular listeners -- ignoring the fact that some people might listen to his show more than once a week, or every single day -- that number is barely a fifth of the nearly 70 million people who voted for Obama in last year's election. You really want to make the American public choose between these two guys?



I'm not saying that Obama is pure as the driven snow, nor that there aren't legitimate criticisms with the way he and the Democrats are going about trying to turn the economy around. I'm not 100-percent comfortable with the idea of spending $800 billion on anything, whether it's a stimulus package, a space-based missile defense, a war in Iraq, or anything else. But I give Obama credit for sitting down with a very intelligent group of people, deciding on what they thought needed to be done to jump-start the economy, and then presenting it to the American public, controversy and all. For all their caterwauling about big spending and supposedly being cut out of the loop, have the Republicans -- whose approval ratings are currently as bad as Obama's are good -- bothered to pitch anything even resembling a tangible alternative? Not that I can see, and here again they appear to be taking their cues from El Rusbo, who at last week's CPAC convention openly mocked the idea that actually coming up with better policy proposals was a winning strategy for taking power back from the Dems.

I worked my ass off for more than a year leading up to the 2004 election, and I remember very vividly how few Democrats had any winning strategy that year other than complaining about how horrible George W. Bush was. Well, you saw how that worked out. Now you have a talk-radio shouter whose strategy is to do nothing more than that same kind of complaining -- and nobody in your party is willing to cross him. This is how you propose to get the American people to vote for you again? I think it's hilarious that these are the same folks who just a few years ago were boasting about how tough they were in being willing to take on Osama and Saddam and whoever else, but they apparently don't even have the balls to stand up to a talk-radio host.

Say what you want about Barack Obama, but you have to admit the guy's a pretty shrewd politician, and nearly every time someone's underestimated him in the past it's been to their own detriment. So if the Obama camp is trying to make Rush Limbaugh the face of the opposition -- which they are, pretty openly, in fact -- they've probably got a pretty good reason for it.

So I gotta ask, is that really the fight you want to pick? All those legitimate criticisms and concerns you supposedly have about Obama's policies, and you're just going to allow them to be routed through Limbaugh's sit-back-and-complain filter? You go do that if you want, but that's a briar patch the Democrats will play in all day long.

Oooh, oooh, now say "Is Barack Obama gonna have to choke a bitch"!

Move over, sliced bread, there's a new standard by which all future things will be measured.

When they come out with the pull-string Talking Barack Obama Doll -- and you know they're going to -- these better be on them. That's profanity we can believe in, my friends.

Big day.

Well, this should be fun.

Enjoy. I did:

A memo from the desk of Arnold T. Pants, Esq.:We have a winner (and more than a few wieners).

• First things first: The Big Ass Pick'Em Group, the official pick'em goup of Hey Jenny Slater, has a winner, and she is . . . a Gator fan. (Son of a bitch, those people win everything. Everything.) All hail Jamie Barnhart (who can be seen here in a photo that has "Hot Chicks with Douchebags" written all over it), a Florida native and ex-Navy SEAL who strolled into the final week with an insurmountable lead and will be taking home the grand prize of one (1) piece of gently used Georgia memorabilia that I dig out of my closet. She also gets this shout-out at Hey Jenny Slater, which is the kind of name-check you can't put a price on. Congratulations, Jamie, and don't say I never gave you anything.

(O bai the wai: You can still join the exciting sequel to the 2008 Big Ass Pick'Em Group, also known as the 2008 Big Ass College Bowl Pick'Em Group. Instructions on how to join here. Seriously, it's so easy even Jay Jacobs couldn't fuck it up.)

• Second things second: Legos turned 50 this year, so y'all better act like you know. And what better way to mark this momentous occasion than to buy me this or this? No, I'm not letting go of this so you can stop asking. Why? Because Legos are hardcore. How hardcore? This hardcore:



• Separated at birth: Gene Chizik and former Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.)?



And will Chizik do to the Auburn program what Frist managed to do to the Republican majority in the Senate? Alabama fans can only hope so.

• College football headline of the year, courtesy of the ever-vigilant EDSBS:



• Barack Obama: Pimpin' president, or the pimpin'est president?





Link courtesy of Mac G, who, as a Hawkeyes fan, is perhaps even more amused by the Chizik hire than the rest of us are.

• And now for some YouTubeage: Two manifestly terrible Christmas gift ideas, the first of which apparently comes to you from the makers of the Ronco Pocket Bukkakinator.



I wonder if any of the kids in that commercial grew up to be this guy? Then there's the following wonderful family game:



The soundtrack and voice-over from that ad were sampled in a track on DJ Shadow's debut album Endtroducing... a decade or so ago. When I first heard it, I thought Shadow had to have made it up, but no, it turns out it's real. Finding out where the hell that came from was like a little Christmas present coming a few days early.

The Friday Random Ten+5 gives thanks. Again.

Last year around this time, I used this regular feature to give thanks for some of the big things that have made my life so full and worth living. This is the last Random Ten +5 before Turkey Day, so now's as good a time as any to give thanks again, but since I've given thanks for some of the big things, maybe this time around it's time to give a tip of the cap to some of the little ones, the things that aren't right there in front of your face all the time. So here are Five Little Things I'm Thankful For This Holiday Season:



Being able to say "President Barack Obama" in a couple months
Say it once or twice, just to see how easily it rolls off your tongue: "President Barack Obama." Then observe the pants-wetting paranoia this elicits in those tough-talking right-wing radio hosts. That's what I like to call a "win-win situation." Listening to guys like Limbaugh and Hannity is kind of excruciating when their guys are in power, but when they're not, it's actually kind of delicious.



The Zaxby's that opened up on Palisades Boulevard
It used to be that I had to drive all the way down to Greystone or Valleydale Road to stuff my stupid face with Zaxby's golden-fried goodness, and that'd usually take 15-20 minutes even if the traffic was flowing right along. Now, though, there's one right on the other side of Red Mountain, and it's right on the way to Publix, Costco, and a whole bunch of other places that regularly wind up on my errands itinerary. A vanishingly slender thread of self-control is the only thing that's kept me from ballooning up to 250 pounds in the past three months.



Blue Diamond Bold Wasabi & Soy Sauce roasted almonds
Ditto. These things are awesome. But these aren't nuts for amateurs -- no, these are men's nuts. OK, wait a minute, that didn't come out right --



Lucy Pinder
Just because. If she didn't exist, we'd have to invent her -- and leave it to the Brits, who discovered way before we did that real boobs, real curves, and a saucy accent beat silicone-packed, bottle-blond stick figures every time. (4[b]: women who aren't afraid to wear glasses. Between Lucy and Tina Fey as Sarah Palin, I may be developing a less-than-healthy fixation on this.)



You
OK, I know it was lame as fuck when Time magazine pulled this trick for their "Man of the Year" issue last year. But I really am incredibly appreciative of everyone who's been reading, commenting on, and linking to this blog over the past three and a half years. Hey Jenny Slater went over a million hits a couple weeks ago, and it continues to amaze me that that many of y'all are actually interested in reading this stuff; it's even more amazing when I check up on the referral tracker and find that some far more talented blogger out there has deemed something I wrote worthwhile enough to link to. Thanks for spending a little part of your day here, and I'll do my best to not suck too much over the next three and a half years.

And now the Ten:

1. Avenue Q cast, "There's a Fine, Fine Line"
2. Groove Armada, "Purple Haze"
3. The English Beat, "Can't Get Used to Losing You"
4. Johnny Cash, "Don't Take Your Guns to Town"
5. Pet Shop Boys, "How Can You Expect to Be Taken Seriously?" (Classical reprise)
6. MC Solaar, "Dégâts Collatéraux"
7. Frank Sinatra, "Night and Day"
8. David Cross, "Flying on a Mexican Plane"
9. Pet Shop Boys, "Indefinite Leave to Remain"
10. Underworld, "Play Pig" (Pig & Dan remix 1)

Your turn, those readers for whom I'm so thankful -- put your own Random Tens and things you're thankful fo' in the comments.

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.

A memo from the desk of Arnold T. Pants, Esq.:Stuff to do in between chugging entire bottles of water.

· I'm on the surface of the moon! Oh, no wait, I'm actually in Arizona, it just looks like the surface of the moon because it's really flat except for a few mountains popping up in the middle of nowhere and NO GRASS ANYWHERE. It's cool, though -- as long as Georgia wins Saturday and I get my picture taken with a fricking 20-foot-tall cactus, it's all good. We've got Wi-Fi in the phat-ass house the Tent City crew rented for the weekend, so I'm sure I'll be able to regale y'all with many fantabulous stories of me doing stuff like shouting "LOOK AT ME, Y'ALL! WITH MY ARMS STRETCHED OUT AND BENT LIKE THIS, I LOOK JUST LIKE THIS CACTUS!!11!1!!11!" as the locals roll their eyes and mutter, "Congratulations, Einstein, you're only the ten MILLIONTH tourist to have done that since you got here." I guess it's like walking barefoot across Abbey Road in London -- you think you're the first person to have ever thought of that, until you turn around and there are 10 people right after you doing the exact same thing.

· Now, if you're on your way to Tempe but you're still waiting around in some anonymous airport looking for something to do, you could always amuse yourself with the Sarah Palin baby name generator. In case you were curious, my name, if I were a Palin, would be Grill Igloo . . . and for perhaps the first time ever I'm actually thankful for the name Gillett.

· Sarah Palin didn't actually say "Thanks but no thanks" to the Bridge To Nowhere, but Barack Obama has indeed said "Thanks but no thanks" to Lindsay Lohan's offer to be a representative of his campaign . . . and my respect for the man continues to grow. If only John McCain had said the same thing when he got the all-important endorsement from Heidi Montag, but what's done is done, I guess.



· As for women I WOULD like my political campaign to be associated with, "Transformers" star Megan Fox once carried on a relationship with a Russian stripper. I'm sorry, I'm going to need a minute, it seems that all the blood in my body has gone from one place to . . . uh, another place.

· This week's picks column is up at Dr. Saturday, and unfortunately, after going 1-2-1 last week, Lou Holtz will no longer be dishing out his fantastic advice and trenchant insights -- the onus is back on me now, and not only do I have to make the picks, I have to declare what I'd be willing to bet on that outcome and if I lose, Rivals.com invoices me for that amount. So needless to say, I'll be treading lightly for the first few weeks (but apparently not so lightly that I'm not betting Urban Meyer's daughter's SUV on the outcome of Florida-Tennessee).

· On the subject of UF-UT, Every Day Should Be Saturday's Orson Swindle sums up the reasons why everyone should resent Tennessee's existence (the state, not just the university) in a glorious hategasm of contempt. It's truly beautiful, and 100-percent on-the-mark accurate.

· Elsewhere in the SEC, a co-worker of mine -- an Auburn fan, mind -- sent me the following photo. In the wake of Auburn's scintillating 3-2 victory over Mississippi State last week, the Tigers have apparently elected to turn the lemons of offensive misery into the sweet, refreshing lemonade of cross-promotional marketing.



· I don't really know why I'm linking to this, except to say . . . uh, like, I don't know -- just, uh, don't do this. I mean, I hope you'd never be in a position to do that anyway, but if you are, and you're faced with that kind of difficult decision, just . . . don't do what that guy did. That's all the advice I can give you.

· Finally, if you're STILL waiting for that plane to leave, here's the second-funniest video I've seen all week (after the Tina-Fey-as-Sarah-Palin tour de force from earlier) -- "The Waldo Ultimatum."

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.

A memo from the desk of Arnold T. Pants, Esq.:Crabs, veeps, and douchebags, oh my!

· On Wednesday I got this month's issue of the Nature Conservancy magazine, and the blurb on the cover said "Counting On Crabs," referring to the importance of horseshoe and other crabs in maintaining the health of coastal ecosystems. Somewhere, in an alternate universe, I like to think I received a copy of that magazine with the same headline, only the subhead read "My wild night with Paris Hilton." Zing! Count it!



· Though I am an avowed Barack Obama supporter in this year's presidential election, you may recall that Obama, as fine a leader as he is, wasn't my first choice. Optimus Prime, regrettably, sat this election out, but it still did my heart good to see MightyGodKing.com include Prime on its list of possible Obama VP nominees:

PROS:
- heroic
- beloved by millions of people
- doesn’t need his own Secret Service detail, as he is a giant battle robot
- can voice over his own ads and it will be awesome

CONS:
- Energon needs may betray problematic views on energy policy
- although technically able to assume presidency on grounds that adoption of current big-rig transformed form counts as a “rebirth” and it happened on American soil, expect a court challenge to his viability
- predictable target of negative ads: “How Do We Know He Will Not Go Insane And Try To Exterminate Humanity?”
- likely Megatron endorsement of John McCain in response

Of course, if Optimus turns down such an offer, there are always other choices. Who, for instance, could bolster the Democrats' national-security résumé more capably than Anthony Stark (I-N.Y.)?

· If it's a generally accepted truism that producers of comedy films will pick out the very funniest scenes from their movie to put in the trailer to entice audiences, what does that say about Mike Myers's upcoming movie "The Love Guru"?



· Turning to things that don't suck, ESPN has already dibsed the TV rights to the Georgia-Alabama game on September 27, which increases the chances that it'll be a night game. And you know what that means: 1) an unforgettable pre-game atmosphere in Athens, and 2) one that, by 3 in the afternoon or so, I'll be too drunk to fully take in. Oh well, I'm sure it'll be fun while it lasts.

· But anyway, since that last video did suck, I'll send you out with one that doesn't: the top-secret, behind-the-scenes version of the legendary Bill O'Reilly "Inside Edition" meltdown that was making the Interweb rounds a couple weeks ago.



Couldn't happen to a nicer guy -- and by "nicer" I mean "bigger," and by "guy" I mean "self-important waste of oxygen." Happy trails, wankers!

In case you never thought you'd see the words "libertarian" and "Barack Obama" in the same sentence . . .

A great column in the New York Times today by law professor Jeffrey Rosen about Obama's credentials as a defender of civil liberties. I'm glad to see someone give such a full explanation of the reasons why I'm supporting Obama over Clinton in the Democratic race -- I'm just a lot more confident in Obama's commitment to turning around the worst excesses of the Bush administration's curtailing of our Constitutional rights. That's not to say Clinton wouldn't do anything to combat those measures, but I just don't see her as doing so with as much determination or resolve as Obama would. This may not be a huge issue to a lot of other people, but it is to me.

It also ties into something I wrote last year, just as the presidential campaign was really grinding into motion, about how the various movements and re-positionings of the two political parties have put us in a situation where the Democrats are really no further away from Libertarians than the Republicans are -- maybe closer, in fact, given that the federal government expanded more dramatically in the last seven years under Bush than it ever did under Clinton or Carter. Insert knee-jerk right-wing responses of "Obama=soc1alizm!!1!1!!" here, and yeah, I know, there's a lot about Obama's platform, universal health care being one major example, that dyed-in-the-wool libertarians aren't going to like. All I'm saying is, maybe it's time to re-evaluate your stereotypes about the two major parties and start reconsidering whether the Republicans really do any better job than the Democrats do of standing up for individual rights.

Anyway, good column, give it a read and let me know what you think.

(Hat tip: Lawyers, Guns and Money.)

Don't forget:Vote for Barack! (And Yours Truly.)

Obama/Gillett: Your winning team in '08. Seriously, we could be twins.

This is just a reminder for everyone out there in SuperTuesdayLand to get out there tomorrow and vote, preferably for Barack Obama -- and if you're one of the lucky so-and-sos who happen to live in Alabama's 6th congressional district (which includes suburban Birmingham and Shelby, Chilton, Bibb, and northern Tuscaloosa counties; check your local listings), you can vote for me as an Obama delegate to the Democratic National Convention.

If you vote for me, I promise not to embarrass myself or my state at the DNC. I know that sounds like an impossible dream, but hey, this campaign's all about hope, right?

For reals, no matter which party or candidate you're behind, go vote. This might just be the most important election of my lifetime, and it's too important for you not to have a say in it.

A memo from the desk of Arnold T. Pants, Esq.

(This is the new name of the occasional Mystery Meat feature, by the way. First commenter who can tell me who Arnold T. Pants is gets a prize, which is . . . the joy of a greater mastery of obscure trivia than other people's, I guess.)


Photo boosted from Busted Coverage.

· Eli Manning, I owe you an apology, and I take back every bad thing I ever said about you. That scramble-to-evade-a-sack-and-then-throw-a-45-yard-pass play was the kind of thing that gives birth to legends, but even if there hadn't been any eye-popping plays like that, I can promise you, Eli, the rest of the country would still be willing to confer legend status upon you simply because you've saved us from having to watch the Patriots get fellated for the next 12 months. Seriously, Boston sports fans, it took you 85 years to gain our sympathy but only four years to become unbelievably annoying. As for me, I've foregone my usual morning coffee today for a nice tall glass of Bill Simmons's tears.



· If y'all live in one of the Super Tuesday states, you may have noticed that Barack Obama aired a campaign ad during the second quarter of the Super Bowl. Maybe one of my readers with a greater knowledge of media history than I have can answer this for me -- has a presidential campaign ad ever aired during the Super Bowl before? This one seemed like a first, probably because the Super Bowl was held later in the year than ever before while the primary season has kicked into gear earlier than ever, but maybe one of y'all can tell me about another one.

· As for the rest of the Super Bowl ads, they were better than last year, but still mostly sucked; I did, however, like the ones for Bridgestone tires and the "carrier pigeon" FedEx spot, which bucked the long-established trend that any Super Bowl ads featuring animals given humanoid characteristics are 78% more likely to suck than a comparable non-critter ad. And, of course, I enjoyed the Victoria's Secret ads. Sometimes simplicity is better; you don't need a clever joke or a lot of CGI, you just need a supermodel in her undies.



· On that note, she didn't appear in the Super Bowl spots, but the Victoria's Secret newbie pictured above, Candice Swanepoel, was brought to my attention over the weekend; apparently she hails from South Africa or something. Here's another challenge for you readers: correctly pronouncing her last name. (Just for the record, I don't know how to do it. Your guess is as good as mine.)


Separated at birth?

· Now that Britney Spears is in the hospital once again and her pal Sam Lutfi has been handed yet another restraining order, I think it's time to address Mr. Lutfi directly: John Travolta from "Swordfish" called, and he wants his chin-gina back.

· One last thing: Go vote tomorrow, schmucks.