Above: President Obama removes one of terrorism’s biggest recruiting tools.

Read about it here, & a discussion about whether it’s the right thing here.

Today I heard Rush Limbaugh on the radio call this move a “political” one.

To which I say: well, duh.

But not ‘political’ in the way Rush is meaning (appeasing the left).

For too long we have failed to capitalize on the United States of America’s greatest weapon: the idea behind this country & the ideals it champions.

The Guantanamo Bay prison represented a step off of the path of those ideals. It said loudly to the world, “do as we say - not as we do.” Closing the prison sends a - yes, political - message around the world that we are better than that. & that our legal system can be effective in terms of meting out justice - even against those who would call for our destruction.

Some discussion on Talk 102.3 this morning brought to mind an analogy. Styles, et al were discussing what to do with the Guantanamo prisoners - & how we can’t have them mingle with the “normal” prison population, because they wouldn’t last longer than 2 seconds. They noted that America-bombers & child rapists are subject to the prisoners’ “own form of justice.”

That’s a perfect way of looking at the mindset behind the creation of Guantanamo.

The problem with the system is that it doesn’t leave room for justice. It keeps terrorist suspects off the streets .. but because we’ve thrown them down a legal rabbit hole, one that’s in my view ultimately self-defeating, many of the legitimate terror cases will never be given true justice.

Closing Guantanamo takes away a terrorist recruitment tool, & joins the battle where it really should be fought, & ultimately will be won - not in a physical location, but rather inside the minds of everyone around the world.

& there’s nothing that says we can’t hold a suspect extra-legally. But those cases should be both temporary & reserved for the very few, ones which we have clear-cut evidence on, & not just people picked up off the battlefield, or arrested in cases of mistaken identities who have languished in Gitmo hell for years.

We as a people are far smarter than that, & it’s a breath of fresh air to have someone in charge who realizes this.

(I should also note that I have the utmost confidence we are perfectly capable of housing these prisoners on U.S. soil. The fears of “well, what if we have a prison break?” can be dispelled if you think through logically the scenario about exactly how much damage a person in handcuffs & an orange jumpsuit could really do while on the run).

We need to have faith in our country, & the multitude of legal precedents of our criminal justice system.

We should not be afraid to try these cases based on evidence & the rule of law, & the rights that our Founding Fathers believed to be inalienable - not just to American citizens, but to the entire human race.

I, for one, would rather die while upholding my great country’s ideals than give those ideals up in the name of security.

FURTHER READING:

RedState says of Rep. Jack Murtha’s offer to house the Gitmo detainees in his district:

“I’m sure the people of his district are ready to greet Khalid Sheikh Mohammed with open arms and casseroles.”

How classy. & what’s your solution, again?

Newshoggers says of Bush’s choice to go outside our legal system:

If they’d just stuck with the existing definitions, all the Gitmo detainees against whom they could build a real case under the actual rules of law, without torture and without rigging the courts, would have been tried as POW’s already. If found guilty, the death penalty would have been warranted in some cases. I would personally have had no problem with that. That it hasn’t happened is a failure of the Bush administration, no-one else. They have proven themselves incompetent to shepherd America’s national security.

& Andrew Sullivan says

“Housing detainees in the US might not be the politically safe thing to do, but it is the only ethical and lawful action. I don’t see why American prisons are incapable of handing Gitmo detainees – they house domestic terrorists already. And how housing detainees in maximum security prisons impacts the American citizens residing nearby is beyond me.

…

What do we gain by keeping detainees at Gitmo? I understand that Republicans might find some political advantage in opposing Gitmo’s closure, but don’t see a logical reason for keeping it open. Trying detainees won’t appear legitimate unless we bring them under the American system, and if we do that some very bad men will go free. But that is Bush’s failing, not Obama’s. This was inevitable the minute the Bush administration decided to authorize torture.”

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Click here to view the embedded video.

See the entire speech above; read the text here.

I, for one, am glad to see this particular mindset go:

“As we address these challenges — and others we cannot foresee tonight — America must maintain our moral clarity. I’ve often spoken to you about good and evil, and this has made some uncomfortable. But good and evil are present in this world, and between the two of them there can be no compromise. Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere. Freeing people from oppression and despair is eternally right. This nation must continue to speak out for justice and truth. We must always be willing to act in their defense — and to advance the cause of peace.”

8 years of our government viewing the world in such stark, either-or terms has been nothing but the opposite of beneficial for our long-term safety.

Yes, good exists in the world, & we should always strive to be as good as we can.

& yes, evil exists, & we should do everything we can to snuff it out.

But I think the fallacy in this way of thinking is the belief that a person, a group, or a country is completely good or completely evil. Each human being has the capacity for both, & just because a person is capable of committing evil does not mean we should brand them as totally incapable of goodness.

& by the same token, branding ourselves as completely good creates a blind spot for recognizing our own capacity for committing evil.

This dichotomous worldview is a comforting one to wear, but it’s not that simple.

The far more difficult challenge facing us is to maximize the capacity for good in every instance - but not writing off an evil act as the mark of an evil person, justifying their eradication.

What do you think?

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

(Illustration credit here)

One of the great things about Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish blog is he often makes a great point using a minimum of sentences, as he does here:

“Does Pajamas Media believe that the future of journalism really belongs to Joe The Plumber? Or that this is really worth publishing? It seems to me that the right is still culturally disoriented. If they are still promoting Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber and Ann Coulter and culture-war resentment as their core message, they are obviously in deep denial about what this election really meant. If their only unifying theme is hatred or reified “elite liberals”, they are doomed.

This denial - this calcification of the worst of the right in the last eight years - is the real danger to Republicans. What they need is a grappling with the public policy issues at hand, and an imaginative constructive, conservative approach to them. But the posturing is so much easier, isn’t it? And still, one presumes, really lucrative for a tiny few.”

Calcification: just the right word.

I often pay attention to what this particular segment of the right is saying, & it constantly seems as if their raison d’être is to have something or someone to villify. & Sullivan’s right in pointing out that this has been so entrenched for so long that there are many out there who don’t yet (& may never) recognize what time it is.

To wit:

Click here to view the embedded video.

An added element to this psychology, I’ve noticed for at least the past 6 months, has been the embrace of a kind of identity politics & victimhood which many on the right have for years - & appropriately - used as fodder against the left. & no, they don’t seem to recognize this either.

It has to be someone’s fault. There has to be a scapegoat responsible for the mess we’re in.

Folks, the clash of cultures/values/whatever still exists.

But it’s been heartening to see with this past election that enough people have realized that there are far bigger priorities to tackle at the moment, & that it’s more important to find common ground than to point out differences.

Michael Weiss makes a great point on this score, too:

“The inevitable fallout when a PR neutron bomb like this goes off always puts me in mind of the Wolf and Sheepdog cartoon series Warner Bros. used to run. You know the routine, provided your childhood wasn’t stunted and deprived: two permanent adversaries clock in each day and exchange morning pleasantries (”G’day Ralph, G’day Sam”) before setting to their predictable work. The so-called “liberal elite” must snigger and snark about a duplicitous, posturing everyman who shilled for John McCain pretending he has any credentials whatsoever to be a war reporter. Conservative populists must then rail against said elite, citing the duplicity and unabashed political bias of the “MSM” (that’s mainstream media to you laymen), while claiming that Joe represents a silent majority of Americans and is thus every bit as entitled to cover the Gaza conflict as are, say, Wolf Blitzer and Ted Koppel.

Lost in the melee is the graver question of whether or not a time of war is a time for cultural point-scoring. There is simply no way that PJM didn’t prefigure the tongue-in-cheek headlines that would follow this announcement, which has unintentionally vitiated the blog network’s stated purpose of standing up for Israel. Joe’s become the story, if not the spectacle.”

What do you think?

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

(I know, 2nd Kane clip of the day, but it’s as relevant to this post as the other was to the other.)

From FoxNews.com (h/t my Dad):

“Former Miami Herald Editor Tom Fiedler says that a democracy has an obligation to preserve a free press.

“I truly believe that no democracy can remain healthy without an equally healthy press,” said Fiedler, now dean of Boston University’s College of Communication. “Thus it is in democracy’s interest to support the press in the same sense that the human being doesn’t hesitate to take medicine when his or her health is threatened.”

Wrong. & here’s why:

Let’s take Fielder’s analogy of newspapers-as-human-body further.

Say a patient’s leg has gangrene, threatening his life. Rather than cut off the leg, Friedman argues that doctors should leave no stone unturned trying to directly address the gangrene in the leg so that it can get well again.

It’s a classic case of not seeing the forest for the trees, & thus the argument doesn’t have a leg to stand on (heh).

“Freedom of the press” does not mean that newspapers get special treatment. The word ‘press,’ to the Founding Fathers at the time of the writing of the constitution, meant more pamphleteers (Thomas Paine, et al) than actual newspapers. Pamphleteers were the ‘internet bloggers’ of the day. Newspapers as we know them did not exist.

This is all about information, not the means by which said information is distributed.

I think about my relationship with newspapers growing up. Not only did I read them, I also threw them for my 1st job, in 7th & 8th grade. Nowadays I check our local paper online more out of necessity for my job than anything else.

I think about the relationship my stepchildren - now 18 & 20 - have with newspapers. They don’t have one.

Then I think about how *their* kids will view newspapers. Assuming they’re around that long (newspapers, that is, not my stepchildren’s children). They will likely say “why wait for a daily edition providing me with information when I can get that information any time I want, 24 hours a day?”

Newspapers as we know them (actual, physical pieces of paper) are going to die - it’s just a matter of deciding whether it’s sooner or later.

A co-worker has another great analogy that illustrates the tension between the old-old media & the very-very new:

Imagine you & I open up a liquor store. Business is great for a while. But then another liquor store opens at a location that’s way more convenient for most of our store’s customers, providing you with some competition. Oh, & one other thing - they’re giving away liquor for free. Now the task for us becomes try to figure out how to get people to come into our store to still pay money for liquor they can get for free down the street.

That, in essence, is the state of newspapers at the moment.

I’m over the hand-wringing. Every newspaper that hasn’t figured out how to adapt to the new rules of the internet age needs to get out of the way so the entire field of journalism can survive & prosper. Which it can. & will.

It’s not about form. It’s about function. & I find it extremely frustrating that many in the old media haven’t figured that out yet.

What do you think?

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

This little clip was sent as a “Christmas present” by the chairman of the RNC, who defended it even though many in the GOP have (rightly) distanced themselves.

It seems like Barack Obama’s not fitting the traditional “liberal attackable mold,” standards of which were set so high by Bill Clinton, Al Gore & John Kerry. That has -apparently- left many in the GOP struggling to find a way to attack.

Well, I’m here to help.

Let me just offer this clear & easy to understand bit of advice for those who are looking for ways to be a naysayer:

When in doubt, don’t call attention to the fact that he’s black.

He knows it.

You know it.

Everyone in America knows it.

Pointing out his skin color - in any way - says a heck of a lot more about you than it does him.

& heaven knows there are - & will be - plenty of things with which to criticize the man. Have patience.

This is not to say you should ignore his skin color, not at all. But -particularly- Republicans, listen: if you still wish to be viewed as a relevant political force in this country, you should take my advice & just leave it alone. You can notice it all you want, but don’t ever think you’re going to win anybody to your side by pointing it out.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

I was out for much of last week & therefore missed much of the hoo-ha surrounding the president-elect’s choice of pastor Rick Warren to read the invocation at his inaugural.

For those (likely very few) of you who have not heard yet, Warren is a preacher whose stance against homosexuality runs contrary to the views of Barack Obama.

But that didn’t stop Obama from the invite:

Click here to view the embedded video.

..even though the move has angered folks on both the right & the left.

My 1st thought about this is that we’re likely seeing a microcosm of what we’ll see over the next four years. It’s, in its own way, a “Nixon-in-China” moment. It’s interesting to watch to see who gets uncomfortable.

My 2nd thought is that you’d never-in-a-million-years see a President-elect McCain extend such an invitation to someone perceived to be a foe of “his sides” “religion.”

It’s a shrewd move. & not just for Obama. (Read my post from earlier this year highlighting an excellent article on Warren’s role in a “new evangelical movement” here.)

E.J. Dionne thinks so too:

“Although I support same-sex marriage, I think that liberals should welcome Obama’s success in causing so much consternation on the right. On balance, inviting Warren opens more doors than it closes.

The always-curmudgeonly Richard Cohen, though, thinks the move is a wrong one:

“I can understand Obama’s desire to embrace constituencies that have rejected him. Evangelicals are in that category and Warren is an important evangelical leader with whom, Obama said, “we’re not going to agree on every single issue.” He went on to say, “We can disagree without being disagreeable and then focus on those things that we hold in common as Americans.” Sounds nice.

But what we do not “hold in common” is the dehumanization of homosexuals. What we do not hold in common is the belief that gays are perverts who have chosen their sexual orientation on some sort of whim. What we do not hold in common is the exaltation of ignorance that has led and will lead to discrimination and violence.”

But I think Melissa Etheridge, who happens to be gay, married, & with children, puts my thoughts about the matter best:

“Brothers and sisters the choice is ours now. We have the world’s attention. We have the capability to create change, awesome change in this world, but before we change minds we must change hearts. Sure, there are plenty of hateful people who will always hold on to their bigotry like a child to a blanket. But there are also good people out there, Christian and otherwise that are beginning to listen. They don’t hate us, they fear change. Maybe in our anger, as we consider marches and boycotts, perhaps we can consider stretching out our hands. Maybe instead of marching on his church, we can show up en mass and volunteer for one of the many organizations affiliated with his church that work for HIV/AIDS causes all around the world.

Maybe if they get to know us, they wont fear us.”

My take: Warren & Obama both are to be commended for their attempts to try to see all people as human beings, not just “friends or enemies,” which we have seen far, far too much of in the last 8 years. It’s a move in the right direction.

But I want to go on the record here as saying that I strongly disagree with Warren’s views on the nature of homosexuality & how society should treat homosexuals.

The arguments that allowing gays to marry is a “slippery slope” - “what’s next? man marries sheep?” - are ludicrous. How many people have you seen advocating their right to marry a sheep?

But Etheridge gets closer to what I believe is the truth in the matter, & why I’m confident that by the time I leave this mortal coil gays as a whole will be more a part of the American mosaic is this:

“Maybe if they get to know us, they wont fear us.”

It has long been my experience that a person who doesn’t know anyone who is gay is far more likely to be “homophobic” than someone who does.

I hope it doesn’t surprise you that a number of homosexuals work at NewsChannel9. & I also hope it doesn’t surprise you that these employees orientation is accepted & treated as no big deal. Know why? Because each of these individuals are individuals. Just like you & me, they come down with colds .. wonder what they’re going to have for dinner .. complain about high gas prices .. etc, etc, etc. Thinking about a gay person’s sexuality comes into play in the workplace about as much as thinking about a straight person’s sexuality - meaning, it pretty much doesn’t. & that tolerance is no accident - it’s because exposure to people who favor their own gender demonstrates to you on a daily basis not their differences, but their similarities to you in many, many ways.

That’s my take, & you’re free to disagree with me in the comments. But this is all to say that while I did vote for Obama, & disagree with Rick Warren’s stance on homosexuality, all Americans with all viewpoints deserve a seat at the table.

It’s a move in the right direction.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

[Above: me before the tree, Christmas Day, 1977. photo by my father]

I’ve celebrated Christmas as long as I can remember.

But there’s a part of the season these days that always bums me out, & that is people who try to make a point of saying “Merry Christmas.”

Now, I’ve long been a believer of the phrase “Merry Christmas.” As a writer for a newscast, I’ve tried to evenly & fairly distribute the words “Christmas” & “holidays.”

“Making out your Christmas list…”

“Doing their holiday shopping..”

etc.

I’ve never made a concerted effort to use only one phrase or the other.

And it absolutely drives me CRAZY to hear ads (& oh, do we ever hear a lot of ads in this business) that constantly do the watered-down Kool-Aid “Happy Holidays.”

A lot of folks have interpreted the actions of corporate culture as an actual assault on their Christian culture.

“I don’t know, I guess people are trying to be politically correct, but I don’t know what’s wrong with saying “Merry Christmas!”

The mayor of Cleveland, Tennessee even gave one of our reporters a button that said that. “We think it’s okay to say ‘Merry Christmas!’”

Well, listen.

I have a distaste for political correctness as much as the next person.. which is why, to the folks who think there’s a “War on Christmas,” I say:

You’re the ones who are over-the-top politically correct here.

You are the ones thrusting your victimhood on the rest of us, who just want to celebrate the season in peace.

Ask yourself: have you personally spoken with someone who says they feel uncomfortable when someone says ‘Merry Christmas’ to them? I would bet dollars to donuts that your answer is ‘no.’

Your anger (if you need to feel anger during the season, which, in my view, you shouldn’t) should be directed at the corporate culture, which is (wrongly) diluting the message in an effort to get every last dollar it can, as opposed to some non-Christian ‘boogeyman’ who’s trying to ruin your holiday.

Think you should say ‘Merry Christmas?’

Then say it! & be done with it!

The only person who has the power to ruin your holiday is the person you see in the mirror.

The last straw for me, in this ‘dumb controversy’ came with this story:

“For a second year, the grassroots campaign of five Ohio women to urge people to eschew “Happy Holidays” and instead opt for “Merry Christmas” is under way.

“I don’t know why it’s politically incorrect to say ‘Merry Christmas,’ ” said Joanne Brown of Poland, Ohio.

Members of the small group, all from northeast Ohio, say they want people to know it’s OK to say “Merry Christmas.” Last holiday season they raised $2,800 to put up four billboards to reverse what they claim is a negative trend.

The red and white signs carried the messages “I miss hearing you say Merry Christmas” and “Why have you stopped saying Merry Christmas?” Both were signed, “Jesus.”

…

Between 2007 and 2008, the “Merry Christmas Billboard Ladies” have taken in around $6,000 in donations — enough for seven billboards, according to the Youngstown Vindicator.”

.

$6,000.

A recent survey found that the average American family is spending $616 on Christmas this year.

So that means - let’s be drastic here, & cut that avg. cost in half - the money raised for these stupid billboards could have provided a Christmas to almost 20 needy families.

I find that obscene.

& what do you think Jesus would say to the women above?

It’s my belief that He would say “why are you wasting this money when people need help?”

Researching this story, I found this sermon from a Lutheran minister in Texas from 2006, that I think illustrates my point:

“…there are different kinds of power, most of them are quiet, unassuming, and actually more powerful. Jesus did not seek the limelight, he did not seek to be first, or popular, or influential. He didn’t try to get to some level of achievement and then use his power. He worked from wherever he was, to do whatever he could. On the road, in a person’s home, down by the lake. He used his power and made a difference in the inconspicuous places.

Someone once asked Leonard Bernstein, the celebrated orchestra conductor, “what is the hardest instrument to play?” Without a moment’s hesitation he replied, “Second fiddle. I can always get plenty of first violinists. But to find one who plays second violin with as much enthusiasm, or second French horn, or second flute, now that’s a problem! And yet if no one plays second, we have no harmony.” Think about that for a minute. The ones who make the music have harmony, are the second violins, second flutes, second French horns. They are the ones with the power to make the music what it is. Without them, there is no spine-tingling richness, no drama, no resolution of chords.”

What’s more, 2nd fiddles don’t feel the need to put up billboards or hand out buttons.

Anyway, kids, that’s the story of the dumbest Christmas controversy of them all. Rather than decry your victimhood, you should spread the true meaning of Christmas by reaching out to help those less fortunate than you.

Merry Christmas, etc. from Vote08

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

The leftward blog Crooks & Liars is using several examples of hateful, divisive speech overheard on talk radio to (apparently) make a case for why we need to see a return of the Fairness Doctrine.

(Read about the Fairness Doctrine’s history here.)

I have some recommendations & thoughts for both sides of this debate:

This whole debate is stupid & pointless.

1. If you find yourself offended by what you hear on the radio, who or what is stopping you from changing the channel?

2. Whatever program a radio station airs is based on conditions in the marketplace, not on an idea of ‘balance’ or ‘fairness.’ A station will more often than not keep or drop a particular radio program based on its ratings, not on the content of any particular host.

3. To those who spout this fear that the Fairness Doctrine is coming back (Mark Levin is one I hear bring this up quite a bit) or those who constantly gripe about ‘bias in the media’ - you, in my eyes, are no different or better than those who complain about the vitriol on right-wing radio.

4. Boy was this debate ever relevant, say, 20 years ago. Look around you. The internet has revolutionized what we think of as ‘media.’ Do you honestly think that the government is capable enough to pull off imposing some kind of restrictions on the internet in any remotely efficacious way? I didn’t think so.

4a. & that’s why this whole argument is so, so moot. The internet is the great equalizer. That has a far greater impact than any government attempt to regulate ‘fairness’ on the (old or new) airwaves, TV, radio or the internet. Don’t like what you hear, see or read? Start your own radio station! Think the media’s biased? Then get your own website & tell it like it is! Come on in, the water’s fine.

There is a literal mountain of issues that deserve far more attention right now. Let’s put this ‘dumb controversy to bed,’ OK?

Here’s a blog dedicated to keeping the Fairness Doctrine from returning.

FURTHER READING: Michael Medved has a piece in USA Today that challenges an entrenched conservative talk radio subculture:

“The great power of the medium involved its ability to change minds — but that requires drawing significant numbers of listeners who don’t already agree with you.

Some radio stars view media debate as a form of warfare, though the ultimate purpose of war involves the total destruction of the enemy. The most effective broadcasters in the Obama Era won’t try to destroy anybody. But we should make an impassioned effort to convince everybody.”

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Marc Ambinder:

“Habitual voters tend to vote in special elections; in Georgia, there are more Republican habitual voters than Democratic habitual voters; the minds of Republican habitual voters were no doubt focused on Chambliss’s sudden cameo as the bullwark against an overweening Democratic majority. But these habitual voters are an ideologically charged subset of the electorate. On November 4, 3.7 million Georgians voted. Yesterday, about 2.1 million Georgians did.

Barack Obama pulled out all the stops for Martin? Not really. His campaign lent some expertise and people, but Obama did not campaign in the state; radio ads in urban markets doesn’t cover all of the “stops.” If Obama’s coattails still fluttered in December, they were gossamer-thin. In November, they were thick and meaty, backed by strands of expensive television advertising, significant early vote efforts in the black community, and hundreds, if not thousands, more volunteers. The Obama political team chose to stay out of Georgia for the most part, and they did so for several reasons, not the least of which was their desire to send a message that mere politics isn’t what’s important right now. Also, candidly, some Obama advisers didn’t think Martin had a chance to win, and they didn’t want to expose Obama to a losing campaign.
Nonetheless, it is conceivable that the fact of the exisrence of a President-elect Obama helped his opponents, who had something to run against. Jim Martin had change; but the general election already took care of that.”

Scott at Powerline:

“The decisive victory won by Saxby Chambliss over Jim Martin yesterday in the Georgia Senate runoff is reassuring in several respects. A contrary result would have carried a disproportionately large negative impact. It would have added further weight to the notion that some fundamental shift occurred on November 4. It would have added to the demoralization felt by Republicans licking their wounds following the results on November 4. It would have brought Democrats to within shouting distance of a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

…

Given the closeness of the Georgia Senate vote on November 4, the magnitude of Chambliss’s margin over Martin is suprising. So far as I know, no one predicted it. In the event, the Republican base proved more motivated than the Democratic base. That has to be encouraging for Republicans.”

Fair point, but I have to wonder if Saxby ‘gets’ why his party finds itself in the ditch right now; I have seen multiple instances both during his 1st Senate term and during his recent campaign that he still believes that George W. Bush & Dick Cheney were actually beneficial to his party. The man, to me, seems nothing but unrepentant, divisive, & clueless.

I’ll be watching.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Above: Barack Obama, right after his speech accepting his party’s nomination for president. Playing in the background is Brooks & Dunn’s “Only in America.”

It may not have been noticed at the time, but the New Republic’s David Browne theorizes that the moment above represents the potential dawn of a new era for the ailing country music industry (hat tip: A Fish in the Percolator):

“Much like the Republican Party, country gave into an inflated sense of itself. It reached out to swing voters-in this case, older rock fans who felt disconnected from everyone from Rihanna to the White Stripes. Eager to reach as many people as possible, country became, in essence, pop music. The good news: Plenty of good singles with grabby, sky-high choruses. The bad news: Too many Southern-adult-contemporary ballads and obnoxious power chords.

…

The so-called real country may find itself as isolated as that huddle of red states in the electoral map. Country stars were notably absent from the fall presidential campaign, and even when they made the effort, they didn’t make much of an impact. John Rich’s McCain theme song, “Raising McCain,” never caught fire, much like the campaign itself.

…

As dreary as all that sounds, country’s current state may be the best thing that ever happened to it. Much like the GOP and its recent state-of-the-party symposiums, it’s easy to imagine a slew of Nashville professionals gathering in a hotel conference room to discuss the future of the music. Some would want to see the music go more pop, a la [Taylor] Swift; others may want to see the music return to its core identity with just a bit of modernization, since country is no longer the music of the middle for many Americans. (Consider it the equivalent of New York Times columnist David Brooks’ “traditionalists” vs. “reformers” thesis.) In both cases, let’s hope the traditionalists, the ones who can balance the past and the present without severe compromises, win out.”

I’ve long been a fan of country music (particularly Hank Sr., the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, Johnny Cash, & Buck Owens), but have also long been purt-near violently opposed to the kind of style that fits under the umbrella of “Today’s Hot Country.” Yecch. I literally can’t stand to listen to US101 for more than 5 minutes.

For decades, the Nashville recording scene has swung back & forth between a true ‘music of the people’ & a sound that almost rejects the former explicitly; conformity takes control, both in image (besides Keith Urban, can you come up with a male ‘today’s hot country’ star who doesn’t wear a cowboy hat? I thought not) & sound, producing a homogeneous mush that’s the equivalent of drinking a Dixie cup of watered-down Kool-Aid. Music in any genre benefits when it takes chances. Far too often the country music consuming public have settled for less.

So I find this article encouraging in the sense that it may promote some sorely-needed creativity in the country music industry (there’s nothing wrong with 1) fiddles, 2) banjos, 3) washboards, or 4) twang, for goodness sakes). Enough with the Chevy commercial sound. Enough with the hats. Enough with the overproduced songs that could be “rock” or “ballad” or “heavy metal” that fail to pay homage to so many of country music’s time-honored roots.

What do you think?

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

From Wharton, University of Pennsylvania’s Universia blog:

“Should Detroit have seen that “tipping point” coming? “Maybe, probably,” says MacDuffie, admitting benefits of hindsight. “When gas prices spiked in 1980, the U.S. was making very big, gas-guzzling vehicles. So they were very vulnerable to competition from the Japanese and European manufacturers who were used to selling [fuel-efficient cars] in a market where gas prices were much higher. So you would think the U.S. automakers, having lived though that experience once, might be guarded about letting that happen again.”

One reason they might have dropped their guard was the irresistible profit margin in light trucks. “The trucks and SUVs had fat profit margins. Even if [the automakers] saw it coming, it would have been hard to shift resources to build more hybrids. The U.S. auto industry has been struggling with a lot of problems for a long time,” MacDuffie notes. “They felt that they could not move away from the SUVs and pickups because they needed the profits from those products to cope with the other difficulties they were having. … Labor and benefits costs were one of the largest problems.” Those costs also meant that Detroit “was slow to make their factories flexible,” which in turn made it more difficult for them to shift quickly from one product to another, adds MacDuffie. So, when U.S. manufacturers decide to reduce inventories of, say pickup trucks, they generally close one or more of the factories that make them. In their European factories, Ford and GM both make fuel efficient cars that are popular in that market. But the companies have said it would be impractical to ship those cars to the U.S. because of weakness of the dollar relative to the Euro.”

I have a couple of thoughts, & 1 idea:

1. The next time the Big 3 execs come with their tin cups to Washington to ask for money, they should drive themselves from Detroit to Washington.

2. Those Americans who bought big pickup trucks & Hummers do bear some responsibility for getting us where we are.

3. I have far less sympathy than I probably would if a) I had a family member who was directly affected by potential auto plant layoffs, or b) I wasn’t living in a community that is benefiting from a non-Big 3 auto plant coming to town. There is no painless way out of this mess, & I’m for more pain now than trying to stave the pain off later.

3. I’m no economist or tax expert, but what about this idea: holding a competition in which the prize is a sizable tax break (for both the automaker & the auto-buyer) for the most fuel-efficient automobile produced in the United States.

Further reading on the topic here.

What do you think?

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Hoo-boy.

Kathleen Parker, already on thin ice for her criticism of Sarah Palin during the campaign, may be setting herself up for a good old-fashioned stake burning among religious Republicans with her column today:

“..the GOP has surrendered its high ground to its lowest brows. In the process, the party has alienated its non-base constituents, including other people of faith (those who prefer a more private approach to worship), as well as secularists and conservative-leaning Democrats who otherwise might be tempted to cross the aisle.

Here’s the deal, ‘pubbies: Howard Dean was right.

It isn’t that culture doesn’t matter. It does. But preaching to the choir produces no converts. And shifting demographics suggest that the Republican Party — and conservatism with it — eventually will die out unless religion is returned to the privacy of one’s heart where it belongs.”

While I think she goes a bit too far in painting with a broad brush (”gorilla” “oogedy-boogedy” (?)) I think I agree with the point she’s trying to make. The problem with the approach of many hardcore conservatives is it is far too “exclusive.” The mentality of “you’re either with us or against us.” There has been far too much insistence that the party’s national-ticket candidates, not to mention those farther down-ballot, “toe the party line” on each issue, particularly each issue that deals with faith.

This had been a problem with Democrats for many years, especially on the issue of abortion. & look where that kept them from, say, 1988 to this year.

A sign of a strong party is a willingness to have a big tent. A sign of a weak party is a pronounced intolerance for impurity.

What do you think?

UPDATE:

Jonah Goldberg:

“For the record, I have no problem with arguments about how the GOP has become too religious. I ended my book with pretty much that argument. I opposed Mike Huckabee vociferously because he seemed the quintessential rightwing progressive imbued with a rightwing social gospel. These are all good arguments to make and they have good responses to them. But please drop the nonsense about how the G-O-D people or the Palin people are low brows and beasts. There are low brows and beasts everywhere, on every side of the ideological spectrum. Maybe if you got more ecumenical hate email you’d realize that.”

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Democrats hoping to get Jim Martin elected Georgia’s new senator are using this ad as a way to drum up votes for the December 2nd runoff.

Watching the ad again, I find its content tame by the standards of today - in which a politician can claim, with a straight face, that their opponent “pals around with terrorists.”

No, what was wrong with the ad (which aired ad infinitum on NewsChannel9) was what it represented at the time.

It was November 2002. Just over a year since 9/11. The country had dusted itself off, yet was still shell-shocked by the event. A soothing balm, though, was a sense that no matter our differences, we’re all in this together.

The ad above, which attacked a man who threw himself on a grenade to save his buddies in Vietnam, & who lost three limbs in doing so, & who happened to be a member of the ‘wrong’ party (not to mention coming from a man who got several draft deferments during the Vietnam era), signaled an end to that.

It signaled that the party in power (the GOP) was going to capitalize on the fears of Americans to try to get “their guys” into the Senate.

It signaled a beginning of a cesspool of bitter partisanship we’ve been trying to climb our way out of for years.

After this ad, it became okay to paint the other party as being concerned only with America’s defeat.

After this ad, it became more possible to sell a war of choice with a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 to the American people.

So again, it’s not the actual content of the ad - it’s what the ad represents.

& if you think I’m just writing this to bash a Senator just because he’s a Republican, click here. Yes, this Senator also came to power with an infamous ad, but he’s certainly not drunk the Bush version of the GOP’s Kool-Aid since he’s been in office.

& if Obama & his friends in the Congress try impugning the patriotic motives of any Republican congressional challenger in the 2010 midterm elections, you had better believe I will squawk just as loudly at them.

If you are tired of partisanship running the show in Washington, & you are a voter in Georgia, I want to suggest that sending Saxby Chambliss packing would send a message that the era described above is over.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

My suspicion that a rumor out there about Sarah Palin not being able to tell if Africa was a country or continent has proved correct.

Click here to read a story about how the man above helped pull a fast one over much of the mainstream media & the blogosphere.

In this job, you always need to be on your guard. & while the whole ‘Africa’ thing certainly played into Palin’s stereotype, the fact that we didn’t have a real live face making these charges didn’t pass the ’smell test’ with me.

Even though a person can write anything they want about anyone on the internet, it is beneficial for anyone to fall on the side of truth - which is essentially what I’ve been trying to tell you for 9 months now.

UPDATE: While I promise to call out any charge that proves to be untrue against her in the future, now that the “Sarah Palin Media” website has linked this story, I want to make sure you’re clear where I stand on the Palin pick.

Kevin Drum:

“Despite all the grief she’s gotten, I continue to think that the selection of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate represents the breaking of a consensual cultural barrier far more fundamental than most people realize. It’s not just that she was inexperienced (Spiro Agnew and John Edwards weren’t much more experienced than Palin when they ran for VP) but that she was — obviously, transparently, completely — uninterested in and uninformed about national policy at nearly every level. We’ve simply never seen someone so completely unmoored from the normal requirements of national office before. She was chosen purely at the level of celebrity, and an awful lot of people seemed to be just fine with that.”

Andrew Sullivan:

“Let’s be real in a way the national media seems incapable of: this person should never have been placed on a national ticket in a mature democracy. She was incapable of running a town in Alaska competently. The impulsive, unvetted selection of a total unknown, with no knowledge of or interest in the wider world, as a replacement president remains one of the most disturbing events in modern American history. That the press felt required to maintain a facade of normalcy for two months - and not to declare the whole thing a farce from start to finish - is a sign of their total loss of nerve. That the Palin absurdity should follow the two-term presidency of another individual utterly out of his depth in national government is particularly troubling. 46 percent of Americans voted for the possibility of this blank slate as president because she somehow echoed their own sense of religious or cultural “identity”. Until we figure out how this happened, we will not be able to prevent it from happening again.”

It’s entirely forgivable for a politician to be elected to office without much experience (see Jackson, Andrew).

It’s completely unforgivable for a candidate to tout that inexperience or lack of curiosity about the world as a virtue.

I will never defend Palin or what she represents until this changes. & I don’t expect it to. She was an abject embarassment to the Republican Party, who only would have succeeded this year by eschewing the approach & style of governing used by its standard bearer, George W. Bush, for 8 years, & who embraced someone who in reality -fatally- encapsulated that failed model.

The quicker the GOP figures this out, the better.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

The Fox News anchor tells it like it is.

& he says what I would tell anyone ready to blame “the media” for ensuring an Obama victory.

You folks who think so give the media far too much power - especially in the age of the internet. Not to mention you give average voters far too little credit.

Look at these numbers!

Pew found two weeks ago that while TV & newspaper use for campaign news among voters was flat this year compared to 2004, the numbers for internet usage TRIPLED from 10% to 33% in the past four years.

A revolution is underway, & if you’re quick to say “it’s all the media’s fault” you’re not only not paying attention to what’s really happening, you’re also not taking advantage of what’s available to you to become your OWN media.

By the way, this is also the reason why any calls for a return to the Fairness Doctrine is a completely moot point. If you hear anyone bring up either side of the debate (Mark Levin can’t seem to stop talking about it), turn the channel & find a better use of your time.

So to sum up,

1. Media=not to blame/credit for the election’s outcome

2. YAY Internet!

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

[image by Patrick Moberg, h/t Andrew Sullivan]

Reminder: It’s okay to be happy about this moment in American history & still be critical of Barack Obama.

To those of you who didn’t choose him, take comfort in the fact that Americans have just wielded a powerful global blow to those who (wrongly) believe America is ‘weak’ or ‘in decline’ & thus ‘vulnerable.’

It is one of if not the most effective strikes against those around the world who would do us harm in the past 7 years & 2 months.

& it didn’t involve the firing of a single bullet.

People of every nation around the globe see that America is the one civilization which has proven over time to work the best, & as of Tuesday I would say more people are going to demand their leaders reflect the American system more, not less.

& to those who feel less certain today about the future than they did last Monday - temper your doubt & fear with faith in the genius of the American system.

America & the idea behind it truly does work, & is worth dying for.

This past Tuesday reaffirmed that loud & clear.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Hamilton County Voter Turnout Bucks National Trend

Thanks go to my News Director, who found these on Hamilton County’s Election Commission site:

2008: 72%

2004: 78%

2000: 64%

1996: 67%

Nationwide 2008 turnout: Estimated at 62.5%, up from 60.3%

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Unemployment Spikes

We learn today that 240,000 jobs were lost in October; the national rate goes up from 6.1% to 6.5%.

Read more about it here.

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Transition Underway

Illinois Congressman Rahm Emmanuel signs on as WH Chief of Staff. Read the statements from both Obama & Emanuel here.

Why Rahm? Marc Ambinder muses.

Hillary Clinton approves of the pick, House Minority Leader John Boehner does not.

The Emanuel pick signals the transition will be quick; read more about the overall plan here.

Obama plans to give his 1st news conference as president-elect; read more about what he’ll reveal today here.

Before that newser, he’ll hold a conference with his economic advisers; read more about that here.

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The Autopsy: What Went Wrong?

Charles Krauthammer says it was the economy:

“We have never had a full-fledged financial panic in the middle of a presidential campaign. Consider. If the S&P 500 were to close at the end of the year where it did on Election Day, it will have suffered this year its steepest drop since 1937. That is 71 years.

At the same time, the economy had suffered nine consecutive months of job losses. Considering the carnage to both capital and labor (which covers just about everybody), even a Ronald Reagan could not have survived. The fact that John McCain got 46 percent of the electorate when 75 percent said the country was going in the wrong direction is quite remarkable.”

Andrew Sullivan disagrees with Krauthammer’s premise.

He’s correct in that assessment, but I’d also give as much weight to the damaged Republican brand.

It’s my view that that the country did not swing more Democratic, as some left-leaning sites are saying. I would say this is a vote more against ideology & for pragmatism. This is a trend I’ve tracked ever since August 29th, 2005. & I believe Tuesday’s voters weren’t necessarily giving Democrats a big thumbs up - they were giving a thumbs-down to the ineffective policies of the party in power, which happened to be the Republicans.

Voters are hungry for results & had their fill of ideologues.

As I’ve said to many in the past 3 years, the successful politicians will be those who work to deliver results to their consituencies - no matter which party they belong to.

More thoughts throughout the day.

Weigh in yourself! Why did McCain lose?

***(note: “e-day” = election day, “i-day” = inauguration day)

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Above: Fox News’ Carl Cameron has an inside tip from a McCain staffer that Sarah Palin

a. Couldn’t name the countries in NAFTA

b. Didn’t realize Africa was a continent, not a country

c. Repeatedly threw temper-tantrums at bad press clippings, &

d. Did not adequately prepare for the now infamous Katie Couric interview.

The New York Times has more here.

While this does conform with other stories about Sarah Palin’s lack of ‘knowledgeability,’ & it definitely adds weight to the story that it’s leaked to Fox News, it’s worth pointing out that post-election revealed internal strife is a common occurrence in a losing campaign.

I would hesitate to call these allegations true until we have a face to put behind these allegations.

Regardless of whether they’re true, I still believe Sarah Palin was an astoundingly poor choice for John McCain. While she provided a temporary boost in the polls, the transparency of this cynical pick on John McCain’s part revealed to voters that he was far more concerned with winning an election than with picking the right person. & that’s a quality -putting winning above all else- we have seen far too often in the current administration, much to the detriment of this country.

& Palin defenders, you need to ask yourselves: how would you have treated a pick like this if it came from the Democrats?

What do you think?

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

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My sincere apologies for the lack of posts here today.

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Last night, I had the time of my life - in fact, one of the highlights of my career as a journalist - live webcasting the results. Not that I come anywhere close to the Great One, but I now have a taste of what it must have been like for Edward R. Murrow doing the ‘See It Now’ program in TV’s early days - in that he “made it up as he went along.”

[A lot of you tuned in, too - my webmaster tells me that viewers logged well over 300 "web hours" during our webcast from 7:30 to just after midnight. Thanks to all of you who sent in the positive feedback, too!]

But the result of that endeavour is that I am operating today on very little sleep. Right now, my brain, frankly, is mush. After devoting every waking hour of free ‘thinking’ time to this blog, I needed a break.

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So here’s the final electoral map:

Note North Carolina is still not called. Right now Obama leads by about 12,000 votes, with 100% of the precincts reporting. Unclear on what the holdup is.

But it’s not going to matter, other than change the electoral outcome, which won’t change the final outcome.

If you have any questions about what this map means, or about anything at all, please feel free to chime in in the comments section, or e-mail me at dlehr@newschannel9.com.

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~~~~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~~~~

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So we now have a new president. & frankly, to me, this is where all the interesting stuff begins, not ends.

If you’ve been a fan of this blog over these past exciting months, I want you to know that this is something I’d like to continue.

& there is a good chance I’ll be up for posting more news items tomorrow, after some much-needed sleep.

But I do plan to go on hiatus .. for a little while. But I want to come back. I want to keep doing this. I want to blog for the rest of my life, & hopefully I’ll have an opportunity to continue doing so here on NewsChannel9.com.

This year has been enormously satisfying for me as a political junkie. But I’ve discovered I also get great satisfaction providing you with information on the web, & helping you navigate the waters in search of the truth. Your input, be it in person, on the phone, in the comments section, or in an e-mail, has always been welcome, & I sincerely appreciate it.

More tomorrow, I think.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

“The Best Race I Ever Covered“

I think David Broder speaks for us all.

Essential reading from the dean of the Washington Press Corps here.

“It’s been so rich with precedent and incident — and so very, very long — that we have, if anything, undervalued and even lost sight of its significance at times. In these final hours there’s some sense in pausing, pulling back and taking the broad measure of a contest that’s sure to affect not only this country’s civic life but also its emotional and psychological landscape for some time to come.” - Frank Bruni, the NY Times

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Commentary: Why Was He Such a Failure?

[before reading any further: check out this post, in which historian Doris Kearnes Goodwin outlines what makes a great president 'great.']

As much as the right would like to avoid it, 2008 most certainly a referendum on the policies of George W. Bush. He has always had a core of support (& I strongly suspect those hardcore supporters also find themselves rooting hard for Sarah Palin right now), but has had the lowest & most drawn-out approval rating of any modern president.

Why?

President Bush failed as a president because of his inability to adapt to what the times required. & as Scott McClellan famously said in his tell-all earlier this year, his administration conducted business in a “permanent campaign” mode.

President Bush governed on a binary basis. Binary could mean assigning everything a “0″ or a “1″ .. or one could look at it like an on/off switch. The administration either catered to the “1s,” those who comprised the administration, or those who would keep that administration in power either in public opinion or the ballot box, & did the opposite to the “0s,” which at the start of his administration meant anyone who voted for Al Gore (almost 50% of the nation). This ‘binary’ policy applied to foreign policy (”you’re either with us or against us”) & domestic policy (”anyone who disagrees with us aren’t true patriots & want the United States to fail”).

No president before Bush ran the White House so full-throttle in this direction. & only in the last couple of years (roughly since the 2006 congressional elections which reputed this style of government) has George W. Bush begun to reverse this approach’s catastrophic effects.

Bill Clinton was forced to declare “the era of big government is over” after his party’s resounding defeat in the 1994 congressional elections.

George H.W. Bush was forced to renege on his “no new taxes” pledge when it was clear that there was no other option to keep the budget out of the red.

Ronald Reagan had to sit down & talk with Democratic congressional leaders to work out compromises on the budget, tax rates, & election reform.

President Nixon created the Environmental Protection Administration, among other departments that are now viewed by the right as ‘liberal causes.’

My point is that every President necessarily has to bend with the times. Compromises were made for the overall good of the country, even though it meant that any particular president’s ideological beliefs would take a hit.

Not so with President Bush. He was not a president who surrounded himself with people who challenged his assumptions enough. He often “went with his gut” in making decisions, rather than glean empirical data or alternate points of view.

Again, the President has recently turned back on this “black & white” view of the world, & things in many areas of the world have improved. Iraq. North Korea. Iran. We are now involved in negotiations with all three countries, which were earlier deemed ‘the axis of evil.’

We are starting to see a military policy that recognizes that those who practice Islam do not all feel the same way about things, an assumption as silly as assuming the same for all Christians.

This year, thankfully, we are turning the page on a dark chapter in the history of the American presidency. It’s as if Herbert Hoover were elected after the stock market crashed, or James Buchanan were president after the Civil War started.

Either men running for president now would have served us far better in the last 8 years.. John McCain especially. & that’s why part of the Shakespearean tragedy that is John McCain most poignant is the fact that McCain had a decent shot at the presidency back in 2000, right after he beat George W. Bush in the New Hampshire primary.

But what happened? Those who favored George W. Bush’s rise to power set in motion an ugly & destructive campaign in the state of South Carolina. McCain’s loss there effectively dashed his hopes for realizing his destiny as the 43rd presidency of the United States.

That in and of itself is tragic. But even more so is the fact that those very forces that kept McCain down 8 years ago joined his campaign late this summer, & have been running it ever since. Considering the personal integrity I have seen in this man for 8 years now, McCain truly struck up a deal with the devil. Everything that happened afterward - the Palin choice, the ‘lipstick on a pig’ distraction, the erraticness of McCain’s campaign of the week of the bailout bill, the branding of Obama as a ’socialist Marxist what-have-you’ - is from the playbook of those who have been in power for the past 8 years.

I suggest making your choice based on how you feel things have been run for the past 8 years. If you are leaning McCain, you have to take a leap of faith that he will upon election immediately eschew these forces at work & become a President who doesn’t put a party’s success over the country’s. & if you are leaning Obama, you have to take a leap of faith that the executive powers that were expanded by an order of magnitude in the last 8 years will not be continued under the leadership of a president from a different party.

No matter who your choice is, I believe that above all else, your vote should be based on which candidate - & as you can read above, an argument can be made for both - would run the nation in a manner that does not resemble the management style of George W. Bush.

That’s my opinion, & you’re free to disagree. Scroll down & leave a comment if you have anything to say. All viewpoints are welcome.

Gleeful & Glum

From the AP:

“That smiling guy walking down the street? Odds are he’s a Barack Obama backer. The grouchy looking one? Don’t ask, and don’t necessarily count on him to vote next week, either. Supporters of John McCain, long less enthusiastic than Obama’s, have become increasingly glum about the presidential campaign in recent weeks, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll released Saturday.”

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Click here to view the embedded video.

Above: home-video from an Obama rally in Pueblo, Colorado yesterday.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

Above: McCain in Newport News, Virginia yesterday.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

Above: home-video of Biden at BGCU yesterday.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

Above: home-video from a Palin rally in Glenn Allen, Virginia yesterday.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

JUST 6 MORE DAYS

The Infomercial

I thought it was well-done. It certainly beats Ross Perot’s informercial from 1992.

He kept it positive - didn’t mention the word “Bush” once.

Watch & tell me what you think.

Read McCain’s ‘prebuttal’ to the infomercial here.

A lot of you have voted already. As of Monday, more than 50,000 people have voted in Hamilton County.

Which way are early voters leaning? Marc Ambinder:

Obama leads by 16 points among likely voters, by 17 points among independents, by 13 points among men, by 20 points among women, is tied among whites, and is up eight among white Catholics. Of the 15 percent of the sample who’ve already voted, Obama leads by 19 points (although this subsample has a fairly large MoE). 74% of Obama’s backers say they support him “strongly,” which is 20 points higher than the percentage who say the same about their support for McCain.

Click here for the full Pew results, as of Tuesday.

Here’s a site where you can see the early voting numbers already in from around the country. Very useful.

From that site I glean:

The number of early voters so far in Tennessee is 45% of the total number of votes in 2004. (wow.)

&, 36.4% of the ENTIRE number of votes cast in Georgia in 2004 have been cast already this year. (again, wow.)

The Peach state is turning into one of THE states to watch this year - & I had written that state off months ago, back when Bob Barr’s Georgia support started dropping off.

But now - look at this chart over at Pollster.com. We have ourselves a real nail-biter, folks.

& not just the presidential race. The battle for Saxby Chambliss’ Senate seat remains intense.

The two latest polls come from polling firms that lean either way.

The left-leaning InsiderAdvantage poll has Saxby Chambliss & Jim Martin at 46-44%, That same poll also shows McCain leading by just 1 point).

The right-leaning Strategic Vision poll has Chambliss up by 2, & McCain up by 6.

& it’s possible that Georgia may be the last Senate race called - as in called several weeks after election night. MSNBC’s First Read blog explains:

“If Martin wins, he’ll have Obama to thank because the surge in African-American turnout is clearly benefiting the Democrat. By the way, Georgia could be the state that is the final race called in the country. Why? The state has that quirky runoff law, and a third-party candidate in the race might hold one of the major party candidates under 50%. The last time Georgia hosted a Senate runoff was the last time the country elected a new Democratic president: 1992, when the election of Clinton ended up helping the Republicans pull the Senate upset (Paul Coverdell defeated Wyche Fowler). This time, however, Republicans fear that an Obama victory will only energize African Americans in the runoff and make Chambliss’ path to victory even more difficult.”

Speaking of African-American turnout, it’s huge in Georgia - check it out. Georgia’s Secretary of State reports that 35% of early voters are African-American - more than double the percentage of the state’s population.

& there seems to be a correlation between a state’s African-American voting population & percentage of early voter turnout. FiveThirtyEight.com’s Nate Silver has the details here. In short, the higher the percentage of blacks in a state, the higher early voter turnout is. The states with the highest turnout are Georgia, North Carolina & Louisiana.

Can McCain count on voters who make up their minds in this final week? The trends (from Pollster.com) from past Presidential elections, in terms of their numbers, don’t look promising:

Click this link (again, to Pollster.com) to find out which way those last-minute voters swing.

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But still, interestingly, yet probably unsurprisingly, Obama still faces a major disadvantage with voters down here in that long-GOP stronghold, the South, per ABC News:

Obama is outperforming any Democrat back to Jimmy Carter among white voters, getting 45 percent to McCain’s 52 percent. But in the South, it is a very different story. Obama fares worse among Southern whites than any Democrat since George McGovern in 1972.

Whites in the East and West tilt narrowly toward Obama (he’s up 8 and 7 points, respectively), and the two run about evenly among those in the Midwest. By contrast, Southern whites break more than 2 to 1 for McCain, 65 percent to 32 percent.

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SIX DAYS.

Barack Obama

His informercial appears on most of network TV tonight… except for ABC (read why here). Needless to say, I’m ashamed of my parent network about this. It’s airing “Pushing Daisies” instead, & running some frankly offensive promos about it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Above: wet, wet wet conditions in Chester, Pennsylvania on Tuesday. Doesn’t look fun at all.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

Above: Obama making calls to undecided voters in Colorado.

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Has Obama fudged his “no tax increases for those making under $250,000″ promise this week? Marc Ambinder does some fact-checking.

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Michelle Obama appeared on Jay Leno Monday. Click here to watch.

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Why the Right’s ‘Kitchen Sink’ Philosophy is Failing

From the Toot:

“…once you’ve made a narrative choice, you do have to stick with it - you can’t just keep bouncing around, or people become confused. If you are telling the story of a scary vampire, you can’t decide in chapter 2 that he’s also 500 feet tall and radioactive and bent on destroying Tokyo, in chapter 3 that he is actually a giant man-eating shark, and in chapter 4 that he is all this and a super-terrorist trying to plant a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles. All of these things are, indeed, scary, but taken together they add up to a muddle.

This is the problem. It’s not just the McCain campaign’s problem - although their inability to pick a narrative and stick to it is a special kind of inexcusable - it’s a problem for the entire wingnut noise machine. Obama is a Marxist Muslim Arab Jesus Black White Terrorist Technocrat Racist Do-Gooder Liberal FDR Stalin Hilter Commie Fascist Gay Womanizing Naive Cynical Insider Noob Boring Radical Unaccomplished Elite Slick Gaffe-Prone Pedophile Pedophile-Seducing Liberation Theology Atheist Etc. & Anti-Etc. with a bunch of scary friends from - wait for it! - the Nineteen Hundred And Sixties. It makes no sense. It’s a jumble sale of fears and scary associations from 50 years of wingnut witch hunts and smear campaigns, a flea market of pre-owned and antique resentments, and if one does detect a semi-consistent 1960’s motif running through it all, that’s because that’s when most of these ideas were coined.”

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John McCain

Click here to view the embedded video.

Above: at a joint rally with Sarah Palin in Hershey Pennsylvania on Tuesday.

He also appeared in North Carolina..

…but, interestingly, without incumbent GOP Senator Elizabeth Dole. (this may be why)

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Speaking of absences, someone’s face appears to be conspicuously absent from his own party’s website.

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Is the ‘Divided Government’ Argument Going to Work?

It’s the major card McCain has left to play. But Newsweek’s Andrew Romano is pessimistic. Former Bush staffer Peter Wehner hsays the party needs to return to its reformist roots [which, I'd add, is what John McCain should have pushed harder for - challenging his party to return to its fundamental principles - instead of blatantly pandering to its base, which has spent the past year essentially rooting for the status quo, or at least is blind to why the status quo is in such a sorry state].

Here’s a ‘Silver Lining’ for Republicans, though:

Single-party government rarely works for very long. It tends to overreach when there are no limits to those in power (see Congress/President Bush, 2002-2006). If this plays out, that will bode well for the beginning of a comeback for the now-battered GOP. [though I will say that if you sat on your hands & approved of how things were run under Republican leadership, you have a smaller rhetorical leg to stand on.]

& here’s a reason Democrats might prefer divided government:

['divided' here being less than a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate]

If this crazy year ends the way the trends are looking - that Obama will be elected - Obama’s historical standing would improve if he brought about change with the help & support of the minority party.

.

The Keystone State Conundrum

Why is McCain behind Obama in the Pennsylvania polls? Michael Barone hazards a guess:

“My hypothesis is that that is because places like the Philly suburbs are places where the recent decline in household wealth has been most conspicuous. Housing prices mean a lot more to you when your house started off at $400,000 and declined to $290,000 than they did when you started off (as may be typical of Scranton or a blue-collar town in metro Pittsburgh) at $140,000 and declined to $110,000. Newspaper coverage of our current economic distress focuses on the very poor (like a recent Washington Post story on North Carolina, which focused on an ex-convict in a cheap motel in Charlotte), but the people who are getting hurt most visibly in their lifelong project of accumulating wealth are the more affluent. They’re the ones whose house values have most visibly and spectacularly declined, and whose 401(k) accounts and stock portfolios have tanked in the last few months as well. Folks in Scranton or in the cheap motel in Charlotte didn’t expect to live comfortably ever after off their increased house values, 401(k)’s, and Merrill Lynch accounts; a $700 monthly check from Social Security is about what they have long expected and that’s not in danger (yet). Folks in the Philly suburbs did expect to live comfortably off such assets.”

& he concludes

“The irony here is that voters motivated by anger at the decline in their wealth seem about to elect a president who has promised to embark on wealth-destroying policies.”

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What Hath Karl Rove Wrought?

The exodus of a chunk of voters - Libertarians - who traditionally vote Republican, that’s what.

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Joe Biden

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s a view-from-the-crowd at a Joe rally in New Port Richey, Florida on Monday. He remained in Florida on Tuesday.

Sarah Palin

Click here to view the embedded video.

Above: at a rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania, appearing with McCain.

.

Sadly, there appears to be quite a few reports of ‘ugly Americanism‘ at her rallies, & that’s a shame for Palin & her supporters, who in my opinion should quickly & forcefully speak out about those who would tarnish her image, especially if you are hoping she becomes the Republican party’s standard-bearer after the election.

That’s it for now! I know it’s a lot to digest, but please feel free to comment on anything mentioned above. ALL views are welcome here.

& check back later in the day, as I’ll provide more info in this post. Let me know what you think of the ‘one-post’ format. I think I’ll stick to doing it this way through the home stretch.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

The most fascinating discourse of this election cycle, for me, has been those in the conservative movement who recognize that their movement is adrift without a rudder, in this nearly-post-Bush era.

I’ve already touched on this here, here, here, & here (& many other places - click on “The GOP” over on the right, in the categories, to get the full list)

Over the course of the next 10 days - & beyond - I hope to highlight some of this fascinating discussion.

The questions that remains to be answered: how long will it be before conservatives regain power in American government again? & who will be the standard-bearer to take the conservative movement in a new direction?

I agree with blogger L’Hote who says he is tired of what he sees, which is an unhealthy preponderance of the implementation of the phrase President Bush used in the days after 9/11: “you’re either with us or against us:”

“There’s been a lot of talk in reformist conservative circles about what the litmus test for conservatism is these days. It’s simple: the willingness to participate in dividing the country between worthy people and rotten people. There’s no ideology or policy preference or philosophy or method of intellectual comportment that holds a candle to hatred of the other, in today’s American conservatism. To that extent, a reformist conservative is no conservative at all. Some will deny this. But they only have to look around to see the absurdity of this claim. Spend a few moments on Red State. Cruise around the Corner. Follow Instapundit’s links. Check out Drudge. Watch Fox News. Attend a McCain/Palin rally. Tell me what you see. You can certainly question the right of these culturally conservative institutions to expel anyone from the ranks of conservatism, but if we recognize that they represent a kind of conservative center, we should acknowledge that this center seeks to define conservatism by its willingness to exclude others from real America.

This isn’t fair to many conservatives. But there simply exists a conservative movement, a conservative center of gravity, that has moral content. And that mainstream of conservative thought insists on cleaving these bright lines. So while I have sympathy for those who come under criticism here unfairly, to an extent this is an inevitable consequence of exactly the “big sort” that the Republican mainstream has been engaging in.

…

There comes a time when a reformer has to realize that what he is reforming is beyond saving. At what point does the conservative zeal for punishing the wicked Blue become such a dominant narrative on your side that principle demands you abandon the designation? Conservatism is not going to give up on dividing the nation into camps of the worthy and the unworthy. It is not going to stop questioning the patriotism of those who disagree with it. It’s the engine that powers the ideology. It’s possible that conservatism can be saved from pure other-hatred. But I am beyond skeptical. Those who question this allegiance to pure identity politics are quickly smacked down by the conservative message-discipline machine. (A machine which has no liberal analog.) What’s more, those conservatives who do pose these kinds of questions then become twice as likely to traffic in apologetics for the same kind of behavior, as their professional lives depend on not going too far off the reservation. (Pick your favorite CW-questioning conservative blogger. Wait for them to post something critical of conservative hatred of unreal America. Now see how long it takes them to turn around and excuse a similar but less intense argument. I think you’ll find it happens with almost mathematical precision.)

So look, conservatives– if you’re going to engage in tribalism, here is your party. Here’s your tribe. It’s at an extreme place. I can’t continue to take stock of conservatism as it currently stands and deny that the only meaningful criteria for designation as a conservative is willingness to cast your opponents out of the American experience. (Which is an act of extreme intellectual violence.)”

Well said.

Yes, I know this is an election year, but this whole “whose side are you on” mentality is really what’s contributed to driving this country into a ditch.

I believe more pluralism is what’s called for. That’s the system of government the founding fathers believed in. Pluralism is when various groups who share a common interest band together to bring about change.

Pluralism has never failed to exist in this country; it’s just that these days it is often groups with corporate or lobbying interests (Wall Street, anyone?) that have really been able to exploit pluralism’s power.

There is no problem that we can’t come together to solve - even if it’s only for that one problem.

I believe that deep down in my soul.

So let’s stop the bickering, & caring about sides or teams, stop the discussions about what constitutes the “real America” et al, & roll up our sleeves & get to work - no matter who wins the presidency.

Please? For the country?

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08