It seems there’s a widespread belief among the punditry that it would be wise for the Obama campaign to ignore Sarah Palin in favor of keeping the focus on John McCain. However, I would strongly argue against this, at least for the next two weeks.* The next two weeks give Obama the pivotal opportunity to define Palin for the country. If he misses this opportunity, it won’t come again.

It’s foolish to think this widely recommended “bury your head in the sand” approach will work for very long. For the next two weeks, Palin will be THE central issue. She will be THE new media star. Ignoring her will only make the Obama campaign seem out of touch, irrelevant, and even afraid to take her on. Ouch.

Camp Obama should instead seek to define Palin as a right-wing ideological extremist, an absolutely incompetent chief executive with a horrible track record in Alaska, and an all around dangerous candidate. Above all else DRIVE UP HER NEGATIVES.

Some will say that Obama should instead keep the focus on McCain. The problem is that there’s no way in hell the media is going to let them. Their best bet is to attack McCain secondarily as the unpredictable, erratic, reckless, craps-playing fool who would even consider putting such a horrible candidate one heartbeat away from the presidency.

From what we’ve seen of Palin so far, the former beauty queen and television news sports anchorwoman is an enormously talented politician. From what I’ve read, it seems she’s very intelligent and has cunning political instincts as well. Democrats should be afraid that come inauguration day this woman might be in a position to step into the presidency at any time, and would be first in line for the office if a 76-year-old McCain decides to serve only one term.

President Palin? Please, God no.

Bottom line: The conventional wisdom (ignore Palin) is wrong. It would be a serious mistake for the Obama campaign to ignore Palin. Instead, they should go negative, hit her, and hit her hard … while they still have a chance to define her. Don’t squander this opportunity to make the chance of a President Palin very unlikely.

* But honestly, who knows? That’s why I’m only suggesting a strategy for the next two weeks. Then Obama will need to really assess the situation based on the facts on the ground. Are the attacks working? Is the media still Palin obsessed? Is Palin moving the polls, or has she become irrelevant? Perhaps at that time the Obama campaign will determine that it’s time to ignore her and focus instead on McCain. But I think they would be very, very stupid to ignore this candidate.

I think it’s quite reasonable to assume that Palin won’t self-destruct. The media will surely set her expectations for the vice presidential debate so low that she can certainly memorize some talking points, have speech writers come up with lots of crowd-pleasing one-liners, and come out without too much damage. Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s pronounced the winner by at least half the audience.

The word on the street is that John McCain is a bellicose hot-head, impulsive, erratic, and prickly. If I were considering hiring McCain for a CEO job of a major corporation, or the country’s top diplomat, or any position nearly as important as the presidency, I would have to think twice. I would have to ask, does he have the bearing, patience, good judgment and emotional stability needed?

Very recently McCain has given us new reasons to wonder if he’s a loose cannon. Reportedly, he offered Sarah Palin the vice-president job at his home last Thursday even though he’d only met her once before at a Governor’s conference. It even appears that he sent his team of vetters to Alaska to check out her background after making the offer. So his campaign had no less than five full months to make the best possible decision on McCain’s running mate, and this is the best they can do? McCain seems to have failed the first test of his presidential decision-making abilities.

Now there’s a short video from Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films to make the case that John McCain doesn’t have the right temperament for the presidency.

The star of the video is Phillip Butler, a man who has known McCain for 40 years, served closely with him, and was even another POW. Butler says:

John McCain would blow up and go off like a Roman candle at any possible time. The world is such a dangerous place and he has shown himself already to be bellicose. John McCain is not somebody that I would like to see with his finger near the red button.

Even if I were a Republican inclined to support McCain because I value his character and his policies, I would still be uneasy about McCain’s emotional stability. I would need to view at least a summary of a full psychiatric assessment of McCain examining his potential post-traumatic stress and any other lingering effects of his internment. I would also want the opinion of more than one psychiatrist as to whether McCain is emotionally up for the job. I would want to know whether he has ever had anger management counseling, or whether he needs it.

Why isn’t the media demanding more evidence that McCain is temperamentally and psychologically fit to be the president? Why don’t we hear more about the several GOP Senators who have said they are scared about the idea of McCain in the White House? Why has McCain seemingly received a free ride from the media so far on the temperament issue? It’s high time these questions were asked and answered.

Perhaps it’s just that the Democrats haven’t been willing to go on the offensive for fear that they will be perceived as attacking McCain’s honorable record of national service. If so, now it the time to get this issue out on the table and let the American people decide.

I think it’s time to applaud the amazing summer for the magnificent Campaign Obama. David Axelrod, David Plouffe and company have succeeded in bringing home their central campaign theme, campaigning fiercely and boldly so that America knows exactly what Obama stands for:

“I am not a terrorist sympathizer.”

“I am not a closet Muslim, a black nationalist radical.”

“I am not single-handedly responsible for the rise in gas prices.”

“I’m against drilling for oil, but not so much that I would stop it.”

“I am not going to let people question my patriotism.”

“I am not going to let people say I’m going to raise taxes on Americans making $42,000 a year.”

“I don’t disrespect our wounded veterans overseas.”

“I am not an empty-headed celebrity like Britney Spears or Paris Hilton.”

“My supporters are not foolish, Kool Aid drinking, Dungeons and Dragons playing imbeciles.”

“Taking a stand on the beginning of life is above my pay grade.”

Notwithstanding Obama’s consistent, often-repeated message about John McCain…

“John McCain, let’s face it, he’s got a compelling biography.”

“John McCain is a man who is a genuine American hero and has served his country with distinction.”

All of which is succinctly summed up in the campaign’s new tag-line:

“I am not the Messiah.”

And last week’s winning theme:

“I may be a multimillionaire, but I’m not as rich and successful as John McCain.”

With such a strong and unmistakable message, it’s positively dumbfounding how Obama could possibly be lagging in the polls. It must be that many Americans are just too bitter to appreciate his message. [...]

For far too long I have been neglecting my weight. Oh, I’ve had some good excuses some of the time (last year, I was frequently too sick to go to the gym; this year, I injured my back and took several months before I returned to a more-or-less normal amount of mobility). But the fact remains that I’ve let my body shape go, and I’ve finally got motivated enough to get (back) in shape.

It helps that I’ll have some great support for at least the first leg of this journey. Last Sunday, a friend and I decided to set the goal of losing 10 pounds in 5 weeks–a very difficult but not unattainable weight-loss goal. We took the dreaded “before” pictures. And NO, I’m not sharing mine! We took all the basic body part measurements. We weighed in. Then we entered into a “contest” with the winner and loser receiving various rewards and punishments…

I’ll wait until the end of the process before revealing my full details, but I will say that my BMI was 27.3. Here’s how the NHI evaluates the BMI numbers:

Underweight = <18.5
Normal weight = 18.5-24.9
Overweight = 25-29.9
Obesity = BMI of 30 or greater

What a wake up call! In the past two years of paying very sporadic attention to my weight, I gained about 20 pounds… What a mess I found myself in, and what a wake-up call. The BMI tells me that I’m in the mid-point of the Overweight range, half way from “normal” and going on “obese”! I probably put half that weight-gain on in April and May after my back injury, when “comfort foods” supplemented my daily dose of multiple pain killers to help me get through the pain. [...]

Five questions reporters might ask Joe Biden … and the answers you’ll never hear from his press secretary.

5. Mr. Biden, what’s up with the hairplugs?

Have you ever considered that because the Senator’s first wife was tragically killed in a car accident, he may have wanted to look good for his second wife?

4. Mr. Biden, have you had a change of heart about saying that Obama may not be ready for the presidency?

It is truly beyond the pale of civility when you question the Senator’s integrity by suggesting that he, a survivor of a brain aneurysm, might now be inconsistent in his positions.

3. Mr. Biden, have you ever been guilty of being racially insensitive?

When Senator Biden was being sworn into the Senate at the hospital bedside of his critically ill sons, nobody questioned his sensitivity towards others.

2. Mr. Biden, what does it say about you that you plagarised some speeches 20 years ago?

Senator Biden has given many speeches from the heart, such as his eulogies for his deceased wife and infant daughter.

1. Mr. Biden, were you wrong to support the Iraq war?

Nearly 40 years ago, the Senator endured terrible, gut-wrenching hardships that have almost led him to drop out of the Senate. But the Senator provded he would always put his country ahead of narrow self-interest and has since become a True American Hero. Therefore, true Americans must always give this hero the benefit of the doubt and trust that he always does what he thinks is the best thing for America, and that the True American Hero always knows what’s best for America. How dare you ask such impertinent questions! [...]

There’s a problem with associating the impulse towards integration primarily with progress, growth, transcendence, and enlightenment. Those spiritual impulses may enable our potential, but they don’t embrace what’s actual. A more grounded spirituality marries spirit and soul–the impulses towards both evolution and involution. Happiness may be a sign of spiritual contentment, but not if it’s divorced from the natural need to express the full range of human emotions, including sadness.

A poignant article on the subject of America’s obsession with happiness and its harmful consequences has been written by Eric G. Wilson, a professor of English at Wake Forest University. Here are a few short passages concerning the virtues of melancholia:

I for one am afraid that American culture’s overemphasis on happiness at the expense of sadness might be dangerous, a wanton forgetting of an essential part of a full life. I further am concerned that to desire only happiness in a world undoubtedly tragic is to become inauthentic, to settle for unrealistic abstractions that ignore concrete situations. I am finally fearful of our society’s efforts to expunge melancholia. Without the agitations of the soul, would all of our magnificently yearning towers topple? Would our heart-torn symphonies cease?

My fears grow out of my suspicion that the predominant form of American happiness breeds blandness. This kind of happiness appears to disregard the value of sadness. This brand of supposed joy, moreover, seems to foster an ignorance of life’s enduring and vital polarity between agony and ecstasy, dejection and ebullience. Trying to forget sadness and its integral place in the great rhythm of the cosmos, this sort of happiness insinuates that the blues are an aberrant state that should be cursed as weakness of will or removed with the help of a little pink pill.

I’m not questioning joy in general. For instance, I’m not challenging that unbearable exuberance that suddenly emerges from long suffering. I’m not troubled by that hard-earned tranquillity that comes from long meditation on the world’s sorrows. I’m not criticizing that slow-burning bliss that issues from a life spent helping those who hurt. And I’m not romanticizing clinical depression. I realize that there are many lost souls out there who require medication to keep from killing themselves or harming their friends and families. I’m not questioning pharmaceutical therapies for the seriously depressed or simply to make existence bearable for so many with biochemical disorders.

It’s Bizarro day on Fivethirtyeight.com, so I just had to let my true political feelings be known…

As an avid John McCain supporter, I must say that all this vice presidential nonsense is distracting us from the truly important issues facing the next American president. And that is, whether the next Leader of the Free World will be a genuine war hero or a junior Senator who recently visited Pearl Harbor in order to buy a snow cone (which he prefers to call “shave ice”). His colors of choice? Lime green, guava orange, and communist red!

Naturally, I am in no ways questioning Mr. Obama’s patriotism; however, I have always felt that is the responsibility of the leading candidates for the presidency of this country ensure that the great red, white, and blue are always given their proper respect. I have no doubt that John McCain would have purchased a snowcone with cherry-pie red, vanilla white, and blueberry blue flavors.

Americans deserve an American President who will not disrespect the veterans and POWs (did I mention that John McCain is a POW?) who died for our country with their choice of anti-American snow cone flavorings.