Political Potpourri

I've mellowed a bit since this afternoon. After I received news of the cheating incident I must have paced several miles. That's good. Any exercise I get here is good. I'll write more about the cheating this weekend.
For now I'll return to my near constant obsession. (An obsession that can described this way: Tonight I was stopping back at my apartment building to pick up a friend to join a couple of others for dinner. I called to let her know that I needed to time to run in to my apartment to use the bathroom. All true. I didn't add that I needed a minute to check the latest Rasmussen daily tracking poll, which, just yesterday, had the race tightening. I have become such a geek that I know the time of day each of the seven tracking polls are released and become quite irritated when they don't post on time.)
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First, I watched the Obama 30 minute infomercial. Its Ken Burns Civil War narration style helped calm me down from the cheating furor. It was very well done and the transition into a live rally was absolutely amazing. How on earth did they get the timing that perfect? As I wrote to a Republican friend, "I wonder how many people saw it and whether or not it actually changed anyone's views. Anyone so uninformed as to not who they are going to vote for by this time is probably not going to watch a 30 minute infomercial. I think it will be effective, however, in energizing Democrats for the last push. It made me want to fly back to America to help out in any way I could... "
Second, whoever does Senator McCain's commercials needs spell check.
Third, we all get those forwards from people that make us shake our heads. I don't get many anymore because I go to snopes.com which debunks them and reply with a basic, "How can you be that stupid?" response. It's a wonder I don't have more friends.
Anyhow, they are often something witty supposedly written by a famous person. Right wingers like to forward stories supposedly written by Maureen Dowd. "See even a liberal columnist like Maureen Dowd questions Obama's fundraising!" The problem? Anyone who has read Maureen Dowd's work realizes it isn't her. As she says:

"It is hard to track down and control these things, and anyone who reads my column knows that this wasn't me. I got to the second line and I knew it wasn't me."

As I was reading George Will's latest column I thought the same thing. If it wasn't posted on the Washington Post web site I wouldn't have believed he wrote it. The number of Republicans who have jumped off the Straight Talk Express gives me the vision of the bus pulling a Thelma and Louise.
And finally, has the Cedar Rapids Gazette made an endorsement? In my memory they have always endorsed Republicans except in '92 when they were part of a handful of newspapers endorsing Perot.
P.S. Today's Rasmussen tracking poll has the race returning to the range it has been for the past month... Not that I was getting nervous or anything.
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Update: McCain may have spent years in the military but his campaign can't shoot straight. Today he's at a rally where he calls out for Joe-the-plumber. Joe's nowhere to be found. Why? He was sitting at home. Dana Bash of CNN called the moment awkward.
I'm sure it was.