We have arrived at the first point in this presidential election, since Obama became the presumptive nominee, where if someone were to suggest we hold the election right now, I wouldn’t sign off.  Which is to say that John McCain has the edge right now — I won’t suggest that ten percent which is on the edge of the polls, but the three or four points … five? … sounds about right.  It’s the post-convention bounce, a strangle on the current media narrative — and a dejavu of past election seasons which have lead Obama partisans to a higher fret-level than they’ve had since going into the Indiana and North Carolina primaries.  It will either pass or it won’t pass.

I have come to a decision.  I am going to completely revamp my sidebar over there for the duration of this presidential campaign.  The three categories, a mass of anti-McCain materials, a mass of anti-Palin material, and a mass of Obama material.  At the moment the Palin section is more fun — we’ve had a compressed time-period to shift through her problems — and the Obama section is a bit unclear — I know a couple items I would toss up — the Jeremiah Speech, troubling politically perhaps, but it was the best and most thoughtful speech he’s given and I’m not always up to dissecting the voting populace’s opinion.  “Fight the Smears dot com”, clearly.  I’ll look around and find what I want, and be honest with myself.

Yes, yes, I am sure the McCain / Palin campaign is shaking in its boots at the news that the Skull/Bones blog is engaging in a sidebar of Democratic Party Hackdom.  Yes, yes, I am sure I will be able to persuade the multiple leaders of neo-nazi sects who have commented on this blog.  (Sigh.  I think that is one of the ways my blog is different from your blog.)  And the other six people who read this blog that generally agree with me will be oh so affected.  And there’s nothing more readable and exciting than stilted earnestness and that strident voice which is taking over here.

I don’t think I will be able to get down to thiss mini-project until Wednesday and Friday.  I state an avoidance over “Trooper-Gate” which, politically, has no legs over a two month period — easy to suggest Clinton’s “Trooper-Gate” and allege tossing up of mud and seeing if it sticks.  What I have in mind on the outset is:  Palin wearing the “Nowhere” t-shirt in advocating for the “Bridge to Nowhere”.  Related is the hypocritical anti-pork crusade of a mayor whose Alaska small town job was to slice into the federal budget, and whose state is the number one state for federal largesse.  This is sub-category number one for her.  Sub-category number two goes along the line of the video of Karl Rove’s comments on Tim Kaine, and her scuttled away from the media — replete with the McCain super-charge against the Media, and my resume alignment comparison with Obama.  Sub-category number three:  the Creationist, her pastors (not as racially loaded as Obama’s), and her Alaska Independence Party speach.  Notably absent from all of this — well, Levi Johnston is the sorriest man on the planet right now as he prepares for his shot-gun wedding.

McCain, from the top, I have two photographs which are automatics.  You know the two:  Hugging W, eating birthday cake during Katrina.  “That’s not change you can believe in.”  I also need to dredge up that Tennessee (or may have been a neighboring state) Straw-poll from 2006 where Bill Frist was casting about for votes, stacking the decks in his backyard, which McCain blunted by urging everyone to vote for Good Ol’ George Bush.  This is the clear thrust number one of this vaguely propagandaistic area.  The RNC Convention was surreal, a call to storm Washington, and I don’t know how many “in” party presidential candidates have ever been intellectually honest in promising a switch over from the previous president of the same party — I think 1896 may have been the last time that claim could have been made.  Beyond this, to tie in the Plutocracy: Phil Gramm’s “Nation of whiners”, McCain’s definition of rich.  Wander a bit into foreign policy:  “Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran.”

I suppose I could expediate this process by asking for a link and an image, but I’ll get around to it.

I had a meeting with Godot yesterday.  He never showed up.  This is the second time Godot blew me off.  I am trying to figure out whether I should give Godot a third chance to meet — kind of important, but if a no-show I will just wash my hand of the whole affair and move on.  It’s a dilemma.  I think I’ll pray to God for some guidance, and see what God indicates I should do.

Again I reiterate: if Barack Obama were in a presidential contest with John McCain, sans any additional connector, Obama would win.  We now have various political chattering class members who have said the same thing in explaining why the Sarah Palin choice was a necessary risk.  (And, any rate, it is not as if a Tim Pawlenty offers a whole giant grasp of policy mechinitions.)  The added bizarre item is that Barack Obama would crush candidate Sarah Palin in a presidential contest.  I do not even think this is worth arguring.  But somehow John McCain / Sarah Palin has given John McCain’s campaign a new lease on life — McCain lives to fight another day… which may or may not be when Sarah Palin debates Joseph Biden, though here — to the extent that in a presidential contest everyone ends up becoming oddly enough a part of the campaign — one has to maintain Palin to the highest of standards with which to meet.  (Frankly she should really not be allowed to be plopped back to Alaska so as to be coached on what her views on foreign affairs are, and to squelch remaining Alaskan affairs, without a political price.)

So it is that Obama gets to contest a McCain and a Palin, constantly measured against them.  So we get to argure against Sarah Palin’s assertion of “experience”.  I frankly wish our Democratic presidential candidate had a bit more seasoning, but nothing is perfect here.  Palin chimed in with this memorable line.:

“A small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities.”

In a previous epoch any Republican partisan would have balked at the experience of a “small time mayor” — cue Karl Rove.  But, here again I reiterate a more proper line of comparing the careers of Barack Obama and Sarah Palin.

Barack Obama’s editor of the Harvard Law Review versus Sarah Palin’s Miss Wasilla Pageant victory
Barack Obama’s Civil Rights Attorney career versus Sarah Palin’s Sports Anchor stint
Barack Obama’s “Community Organizing” versus Sarah Palin’s PTA
Barack Obama’s Illinois State Senate tenure versus Sarah Palin’s Wasilla Mayorship
Barack Obama’s US Senate seat from Illinois versus Sarah Palin’s Alaska Governorship

I tend to think this is a more proper guideline.  There are a few items floating in both of their resumes that need to be plugged.  Plucked directly from wikipedia, which by necessity is going to tend toward the bland and is unable to state forthrightly various controversies which now swirl around her: 

Palin chaired the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, while also serving as Ethics Supervisor of the commission.   Obama:  taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School for twelve years

Obama also wrote one memoir (I don’t think his second book — campaign directed material, sort of similar in purpose to the “Sarah” biography — really should count as “writing”) — not the “two memoirs” mocked by Ms. Palin.

This lining up is meant to, I suppose be-little Palin a tad (Sports Anchor verus Editor of Harvard Law Review), but also basically to realign Palin’s implication of “Community Organizer”.  Which is sort of like being a member of the PTA, except with different racial overtones to be exploited.  From this alignment we can appreciate what they did or did not do in each part of the career.  For instance, I have seen some “Libertarian Cases for Palin”, which strikes me as a bit of a joke — for one thing, Palin’s not the presidential candidate, for another thing [I’ll go ahead and squirt past some comments on “Libertarianism” for the moment] — for a Wasilla mayorship which plucked as much federal expenditures as it could and for an Alaska which is takes more federal expenditures from the budget than any other state.  We sort of need to get the careers aligned to get at it.

As for Obama’s “Community Organizing”, I need to re-read the Weekly Standard’s hit-piece about that tenure from a few months’ back.  It was a critical piece, but a critical piece which lead me to a higher opinion of Obama, because their ideological complaints misfired.  For instance, the article suggested a bit of Obama campaign padding in stating that he “stood up to” developers in a contentious fight to get rid of Asbestos in some low income housing.  The Weekly Standard suggested that they were more than acceptible to the complaint, and quite willingly followed Obama’s request to remove it.  Which, if true, actually fits right into Obama’s Kumbaya rhetoric — the Asbestos was removed, the quality of life for the poor residents of that housing development moderately rose — and Obama brought it to fruition.  By comparison, he worked with Lugar in his US Senate career to deal with the problem of loose nukes, which was a bill that received — as Obama’s critics point out — either unanimous or near unanimous support.  Both matters seem to bring us to a more fruitful position, ?no?   The article went on to comment that Obama really didn’t accomplish the task of getting people out of the place, which was a matter that stymied me when I read it — unless the writer and editor of the Weekly Standard had some Utopian Vision which is at odds with the very definition of “Conservative” — and, which frankly I think what is called Liberal in American politics has (largely for the good, really) abandoned somewhere in the haze of the late 1960s or 1970s.  But their vision of that “Community Organizing” hints at a sinister “pimp daddy” to some poor folk — Asbestos or no Asbestos, Obama would then grind them into a Political Machine, Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed style.

For the record, I did not mean to suggest that Tom Metzger was dead, and I do not believe that my blog post about a plastered neo-nazi sticker could be honestly be read as such, let alone by Tom Metzger.  Hence, I can’t even really come up with even a weasly apology of “If read as such” with any force of honesty attached.

But, to reiterate, Tom Metzger, the leader and founder of the “White Aryan Resistance”, is not dead.  His Ghost wanders about nowhere.  His live self resides wherever it is he resides these days, plucked over to interviews whenever media feels the itch to document neo-nazis — or rehash events from two decades ago as the Portland Mercury did a few weeks back, and where he keeps track of whenever someone might mention his name on a blog.  Bottom line:  Rumors of Tom Metzger’s death have been greatly exaggerated.

As for Minneapolis, with a quick nod over to this old news item:  Mixing hippies and vegans with street thugs, neo-nazi’s and police agents…err…uck?

Though, I do not believe they are much anywhere.

AND… I will not be carrying on with this topic.

U!S!A!  U!S!A!  U!S!A!

The least anticipated presidential nomination speech concludes, overshadowed by the curiosity of the vice-presidential speech, and it did indeed live up to its anti-climactic promise.  All the sort of chatter of John McCain’s luckluster speech has seemed to bandy about the realm of the Code Pink disruptors, or over to the weird “Walter Reed Middle School” fracus, but one thing popped out at me as rather surreal.  Skip to 8:46 and watch the conclusion of John McCain’s speech.  John McCain entreats the crowd to various causes and “Fight with Me” “Stand Up!”  and on and on.  Simply put: Why?  It is a stylistic decision to get bum-rumped by crowd noise, but it’s a stylistic decision that doesn’t really make any sense to me.  Though, some items of the speech really did miss any mark — wherein John McCain entreated the American public to greater community service, such as feeding stray puppies and “teaching illiterate adults to read”.  I cannot quite tell if that was a slam against Obama’s “Community Organizing” by way of suggesting personal initiative instead of their vision of petitioners for bigger Gummint — ie: “Organize Yourselves!.

Let it be, I suppose.  U!S!A!  U!S!A!

Sarah Palin has now been flown right back to Alaska, where she will reportedly be placed into deep freeze for much of the remainder of the campaign.  I do not think such a feat is possible.  The good news is that Barack Obama would defeat Sarah Palin in a presidential contest, just as he would defeat John McCain.  The Organized Chaos Theory for Sarah Palin is that she brings a sustained deep commitment from narrow targets, some of the narrow targets out in the Michigan and Ohio hintherlands, while John McCain will have to garner an, albeit tepid, broad support of the public at large — POW, “Mavrick“, “Country First” safe and sound choice.  Palin made her splash, and the negativities have to be safe-guarded while the positives have to be amplified.  My gut tells me that this is a tight-rope walk which is going to end badly for McCain — I gather the “tepid” McCain has to be whetted to some feel of excitement and the excitement of Palin has to be damped down and grounded — the narrow audience expanded– but who knows?  The “Composite View of What Voters take from Personalities” may yet yield to Dull / Excite over Excite / Dull.  Wait a week to see what the numbers show, and then just let this thing drift to the “debates”.  The good thing about the conventions being pushed back to around Labor Day is that, for the most part, the General Election has all around been truncated to a more proper shortened length.

The first thing I saw from the RNC Convention yesterday was a Black Railroad Operator from Texas, railing against “Identity Politics“, which is the big boogey-boo of black Republicans.  This was a bit fascinating, as the whole Republican Convention has devolved into this great celebration of Identity Politics — Rural Americana, or a peculiar vision thereof.  Mike Huckabee let everyone know that the first time he used soap was when he entered college — where, as we’ve learned earlier he cooked squirrels in popcorn poppers.  That was a lesson to attack the image of the “Country Club Republican”.  I doubt many Republicans of any income bracket can identify with not having soap, but this certainly showed the Liberal Eastern Elites.  As did the story about those cruel soldiers taking school-children’s desks away to prove them a lesson, which begged the question — why wasn’t that teacher reprimended for wasting tax dollars?

Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani paraded against the North-Eastern Elites — the former governor of Massachusetts and the former mayor of New York City, who failed to take this line of attack when they were running for office in those places.  They shouted promises to Take America Back (from eight years of a Republican administration, and a Supreme Court Romney managed to claim as “liberal”?), and Giuliani managed a few plugs for 9/11, and reminded us all that “We are all Georgians” (frankly, no.).  I guess we can say that the energy level had picked up from Tuesday — and that day’s awe-inspiring Fred Thompson and Joseph Lieberman speeches and George H W Bush Tribute video.

Earlier in the day, Peggy Noonan had referenced, thinking she was off mic, the Sarah Palin selection as “political bullshit”, a conversation I’ve seen bandied about with unconvincing apologias.  It will be interesting to see, when the politics of the moment passes, how many “professional Republicans” privately hold that opinion.  We are sludging through this debris — cue Karl Rove‘s slam of Obama’s potential selection of Tim Kaine  (they know a few things in the 105th largest city in America that those elitists in the 104 larger cities don’t know, I tell you…)– and note to the Dems: slice these two items together NOW and relase as an ad, at the very least stuck on campaign website and on youtube, to be disseminated and ad naseum discussed by the media.  I note that the National Review found the same NY Times editorial regarding Ferraro as I did — which I only obliquely referenced but provided my answer (there are more experienced women in politics in 2008 than there was in 1984) — though I can also add that the editorial would have been a response to opinions expressed by such sources as the National Review… these things will boomerange on everyone.

As for Sarah Palin’s speech… it was whatever the Hell it was.  The basic outline of the speech was already written for “Unnamed Vice-Presidential candidate”, and I will say that she fit in the biographical spots herself, and probably sharpened some of the specific jabs at Obama.  What had been a good Obama Convention poll bounce which blurred into a Palin poll ker-plunk has been stalled for the moment — which is the way this is supposed to work.  Mentioning the “Hockey Mom” and “PTA” experience, I had to wonder, though:  Do the people want that?  (I have a vague image of that country song and movie as roughly where this arena of “PTA Politics” heads us into.)  I suppose if you want to play the home game, you can categorically edge the “PTA” and compare that part of her career with Obama’s “Community Organizing” (the mayorship then gets compared with the tenure in the Illinois state Senate, and you move on to Senate versus Governor).  The attacks on “Community Organizing”, complete with a sort of “Rural versus Urban” theme gives us a bit of a racial subtext that is more than a little disconcerting.  Will she find her way onto Meet the Press, never mind the McCain attack on the “Liberal Media” as a reason she won’t get her fair shake so stuff it — and is it just as well for the Obama Campaign if not?  Some message trampling has occured here – “Harry Reid — leader of the ‘Do Nothing Senate’ — said ‘I can’t stand John McCain” — a partisan attack which folds away what made McCain a popular politician this past decade, and which also, incidentally, sheds away a large part of a recent Charles Krauthammer editorial.  A typical Palin fan these days, I guess, is writing letters to the editor such as:

Liberals are really running scared when you publish two critical letters for every supportive letter.  Any woman who can govern the [geographically] largest state in the Union, raise five kids, and keep a real he-man husband happy (???) has to something special.

In the end, the campaign will wind its way to the end, and Sarah Palin will be an automatic top tier Republican candidate for 2012 — though, I don’t know if that is “hers to lose”.   Obama and Joseph Biden have a candidate to defeat, named John McCain, and another candidate to deflate, name of Sarah Palin — they exist, and they need to be tactically defeated.  I think, at the end of the day, Sarah Palin is not going to pass the smell test for the American people, but that’s a matter that simply put cannot be taken for granted, and there will be ample opportunity to press it into a further attack on the main man: John McCain.  But overall I must say that there is nothing like a Republican Convention to convince me that I am a Democrat, just as there is nothing like Rush Limbaugh to convince me that Hillary Clinton is a’okay.