I have been a little suspicious of the validity of the Presidential polls we have been seeing. There are several reasons for my skepticism, variance in polls, methods, past inaccuracies, and the fact that a lot of them are run by liberal organizations, among other reasons.

I have another, far less scientific, reason though. The late night ratings.

In the last week John McCain and Sarah Palin have appeared on separate late night shows, both with likely traditionally liberal and young audiences, and gave them both big ratings increases.

Last Thursday McCain appeared on the David Letterman show and gave him his biggest audience in almost three years. His 6.53 million viewers is almost double is nightly average and almost 40% higher than Jay Leno for the night, a show he usually draws fewer viewers than.

Then we have Sarah Palin’s funny appearance on Saturday Night Live. She drew the largest SNL audience in 14 years.

It was a typical day in Wasilla, Alaska when the former Mayor and current Governor, Sarah, was whisked far far away to a strange land in a whirlwind with her pet Moose, Toto.

The whirlwind dropped her onto something hard and cold. Looking down, she realized she was sitting on a woman. At this moment, a man in strange dress (actually, a skirt of some sort) approached her and told her she landed on Hillary, the Wicked Witch of the East.

Jumping up and brushing glass shards from her clothes, Sarah exclaimed “I didn’t mean to do that, I’m not even sure where I am.”

The man giggled and exclaimed in a high pitched voice, “Let me explain. You are in the Village of Greenwich in the region of New York. Hillary has ruled this area for some time now, spending her time most recently putting 18 million cracks into the glass ceiling you just crashed through…”

His explanation was suddenly interrupted by the crash of a door flying open. Walking through the door was a severe, unpleasant looking woman.

“This is the Wicked Witch of the West, Nancy, from the village of San Francisco. She’s mean.” Whispers the man to Sarah.

“Who is this and what is going on here?” Screeched Nancy, glaring at Sarah.

Sarah, refusing to fear this woman, stood her ground and said “I am Sarah from the land of Alaska, who are you?”

Glancing again at Sarah, the Witch let out a horrifying scream when she saw her sister, Hillary lying on the ground under a pile of glass, moaning.

At this moment, Sarah and the Witch Nancy realized that Sarah was wearing a strange cloak. “What are you doing with that on?” Demanded Nancy.

Sarah looked down at the garment and said “I don’t what this is but it does seem to fit me nicely, almost if I were born to wear it.”

“That is the Mantle of Feminism, that has been worn up until now by Hillary. How dare you take that from her?” spat Nancy. At that moment they could hear the shrieks of Hillary’s Harpies from throughout the land at the notion that Sarah had appeared to take the Cloak from Hillary. The Harpies had believed that it was Hillary’s birthright to wear the Cloak and the notion of another wearing it was too much for them to bear. “Give the Cloak to me.” Demanded Nancy.

“No” said Sarah, “I think I’m going to wear it from now on.”

Nancy started towards Sarah menacingly in an apparent attempt to remove the Cloak forcibly. Just at that moment, another door crashed open and through it walked a tall, fair skinned woman. This one appeared to be much kinder than Nancy. “Cindy, the Good Witch of the Southwest.” Whispered the man in the skirt.

“Stop” commanded Cindy to Nancy “do not attempt to harm this woman.” To Sarah, Cindy said “Wear the Mantle proudly, it suits you well. Sadly though, there is danger from the Wicked Witch sisters and their Harpies if you continue to wear it. I feel you should go to the Village of Chicago to speak to the Wizard. The Wicked Witch sisters and their Harpies revere the Wizard. The word from the scribes is that he is a kind and even Messianic man, though I suspect this is not true. If you could expose him for what he is, it may keep you safe from the forces of dark.”

Sarah says to Cindy “I am new to this land, how do I get to the Village of Chicago?”

Cindy smiled kindly and said “Why, you follow the yellow brick road”.

Looking down, Sarah saw she did indeed appear to be standing on a yellow brick road.

Just then six strange men, each dressed differently, a sailor, an Indian chief, a construction worker, a policeman, a biker, and a cowboy, began to dance and sing “follow the yellow brick road, follow the yellow brick road, follow, follow, follow, follow the yellow brick road.”

Walking away quickly and nervously, Sarah and Toto indeed began to follow the yellow brick road. Sarah saying “What a strange group of people, I think it’s safe to say we’re not in Alaska anymore.”

Walking down the road a little later, Sarah came across a man standing in an apple orchard. The man was stiff and emotionless and appeared to have been waiting there for at least eight years. As Sarah joined the man, he appeared to come to life a little, though he would forever remain unexcitable. Introducing herself, Sarah found out the man’s name was John.

Sarah asked John if he would like to accompany her to the Village of Chicago to meet the Wizard. She had read in the paper that morning that the Wizard had a dynamic, rock star persona and she was thinking that if they could show that this isn’t true, it may help both of them get what they want. He agreed and off they went.

After a day and a night, they came to a large, sort of grimy village with a huge gate at it’s entrance. Upon Sarah knocking on the door, a window opened and a grumpy man peered out. “What do you want?” said the man who we come to find is named Joe.

“We’ve come to see the Wizard” exclaimed Sarah and John in unison.

“Impossible” growled the man, “the Wizard is too busy and important to be bothered by common people”

“We’ve been sent by Cindy, the Good Witch of the Southwest” stated Sarah, “I have the Mantle of Feminism.”

After approximately an hour and a half debate in which Joe gave several (14 actually) questionable reasons as to why they couldn’t enter, Joe relented and opened the door.

Upon entering the city, Sarah and John were a little taken aback at the apparent decay and corruption they saw about them. These thoughts were interrupted by Joe telling them about the village. He described it as a near fantasy land-type collective where everything is provided for them. Life is good in their own isolated little land. The Wizard has told them that there is nothing to worry about in the world past their borders. Though Joe or the other inhabitants of Chicago have never seen the true Wizard, they could not question his power because he is a benevolent ruler who just by his being keeps the people safe, healthy, and well taken care of. When asked, Joe said they don’t question the fact that they have not seen the real man because he is the Wizard and who would question the Wizard? He seemed very puzzled by all of this.

Joe’s reverent accounting of the Wizard was still ongoing as they approached a great door. As Joe opened the door, Sarah and John peered inside and saw a long gilded hallway stretching into the distance.

At the end of this hallway they came to a smaller, ornate door which Joe opened. As Sarah and John approached the door, Joe bowed and averted his eyes. Sarah looked at John, they both shrugged, and Sarah, John, and Toto walked through the door.

Just as their eyes were adjusting to the dimly lit room, a large, indistinct head appeared and a voice boomed “who dares to disturb the Wizard”

“It is I, Sarah, I have a few questions.”

“Proceed” said the Wizard “I can answer all”.

Sarah questioned the Wizard: What was his stance on the crisis in the Village of Wall? Did he really think he could cut taxes and yet pay for a growth in government spending? How can you possibly give tax breaks to people who do not pay taxes? Just who are these men you have running your Village, Bill Ayers, Rev Wright, Franklin Raines?

The more Sarah questioned the Wizard, the more he appeared to stammer and become less and less able to answer the questions. Just as she was becoming certain that the Wizard was not all the masses thought he was, Toto walked over and pulled a curtain aside exposing a small, skinny man working levers and controls.

“Ignore that man behind the curtain” roared the voice.

“Why your not a Wizard at all,” exclaimed Sarah “your just a ordinary man.”

“Shh” said the now exposed Wizard. “No, I am not a Wizard, I’m Barack Obama. Your messing up my gig here. Now go away.”

“Well, God Bless you.” said Sarah “We can’t let you continue to fool the people. We have to break the spell you have over the scribes and let the public see you for what you are.”

Before Obama could answer, Cindy the Good Witch of the Southwest appeared before them. “Barack, you have been exposed for what you are. It’s time to return to your homeland of Kenya and free these good people of America to live their lives in prosperity.”

In yet another example of lack of any pretense of evenness at ABC News, this is the headline about Bristol Palin’s fiancé and the father of her baby “Palin's Baby Daddy Drops Out of School”. Story here. http://abcnews.go.com/

While this seems unimportant, put it in the context of days of stories questioning McCain on his comments. He has been called racist for using the phrases “That One” or “I’m going to whip Obama’s a$$” (at the debate). Being attacked by Obama supporters for “sowing the seeds of hatred” and compared to segregationist Governor George Wallace for having the audacity to question Obama’s character.

After McCain having his racial tolerance questioned every time he opens his mouth, and ABC gladly spreading the “news”, we have this from the network itself.

Using the term ‘baby’s daddy’ has racial undertones to it, if it’s not used on a white daughter of the Republican candidate for the Vice Presidency that is. I could just see the Hell raised if Fox News ran a story about a minority teenager with this headline.

A Democratic Representative from Georgia, John Lewis, has compared John McCain and Sarah Palin to George Wallace. Governor George Wallace was a segregation proponent from Georgia. Rep Lewis, in comparing McCain and Palin to Wallace, is claiming that they are fanning the flames of hatred.

"What I am seeing reminds me of too much of another destructive period in American history," Lewis said in a statement released to FOX News. "Senator McCain and Governor Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse."

Rest of the story here:  

The implication couldn’t be clearer, criticizing Barack Obama is racism.

The reality is that we better get used to this. I predicted early on that this would be the pattern. Towards the end if Obama was losing, or was under attack, his supporters will trot out the racism charge. It is an absolute gaurantee. He of course will stay above the fray, he has even come out and disagreed with Rep Lewis on this, but it’s out there.

In fact I will go even farther and say it is a planned strategy. Stand ins will cry racism and Obama will say “no, I don’t think he meant it that way”. Obama’s campaign knows, as well as I do, what the media is going to report. They won’t report the denial by Obama as much as they will report the charge of racism against McCain.

This happened after the last debate. Obama supporters raised a fuss over McCain’s “that one” remark. Somehow “that one” has now become a racist remark. The campaign let the issue stew awhile, let their supporters attack, let the media report on it. Then after a little while, Michelle Obama quitely went on Larry King and said she didn’t feel that McCain meant to be racist. This is a win-win for Obama. His supporters tar and feather McCain in the media, at the same time if they are attacked for raising a false call of racism, they can point to Michelle’s remarks on King.

The scary part is that if the phrase “that one” can be turned into charges of racism, what could McCain say that is ok?

Yet more about the media’s bias for Barack Obama. The Associated press has essentially set themselves up as nothing more than a 527 for the Obama campaign.

Reading this article here, it has become obvious that there is no longer any pretense of journalistic integrity at the AP. They have gone way beyond any semblance of impartiality and have now crossed over into being an organization that does nothing more than dispenses talking points from the Obama campaign. 

The article, titled Old events fuel new presidential campaign attacks, is about Sarah Palin bringing up the association between Barack Obama and domestic terrorists Bill Ayers and the Obama campaign counterattack about McCain’s role in the Keating Five scandal.

The AP is taking offense at the audacity of the McCain/Palin campaign discussing Obama’s long term relationship with Atyer’s, the founder of the Weather Underground. The Weather Underground is a domestic terrorism organization that is anti-American and advocated the bombing of the Pentagon. Keep in mind that Ayer’s does not deny his leadership of this group. In fact, he has expressed regret that they could not do more.

The Read the article for a feel of what it was like. But here are some examples of the different approaches to the two issues.

The two men live in the same Chicago neighborhood and once worked on the same charity board. Ayers hosted a small meet-the-candidate event for Obama in 1995, early in his political career. Obama strategist David Axelrod has said the two men are "friendly."

The Senate ethics committee investigated five senators relationships with Keating. The panel cited McCain for a lesser role than the others, but faulted his "poor judgment."

It’s incredible that you can put so many bias’ in one short sentence. First, the AP doesn’t mention that the other four of the Keating Five were Democrats. Five Senators were involved in the scandal:

-Alan Cranston (D-CA) took over 1 million dollars from Keating, found by panel to have twisted the arms of other Senators for Keating and found to have interfered with the Senate investigation. Was reprimanded in front of the entire Senate.

-Donald Riegle (D-MI) found by panel to have interfered with investigation

-Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ) found by panel to have interfered with investigation

John Glenn (D-OH) found by panel to have had minimal role, found to have used “poor judgment”, charges dropped by panel

John McCain (R-AZ) found by panel to have had minimal role, found to have used “poor judgment”, charges dropped by panel. Quoting from the final report "actions were not improper nor attended with gross negligence and did not reach the level of requiring institutional action against him....Senator McCain has violated no law of the United States or specific Rule of the United States Senate."

Note: source of quote and above findings of panel here.

The real story on the Sarah Palin attacks on Obama for his association with Ayer’s is that she is doing the media’s job for them. One of the very reasons the founding fathers included freedom of the press in the Constitution was to keep the government honest. The press would be free to report on government officials and affairs to prevent the development of a tyrannical government. In short, on Barack Obama, they have shirked their responsibility. If the media had explored the past of Obama, he would not be the nominee today. They instead have made themselves the apologists for his campaign.

Watching the news this morning and scanning the news sites, it is incredible how wide the polls are on who won the Vice Presidential debate last night. This I think speaks more about polls than about the debate and further highlights something I believe, who won the debate is an irrelevant and unanswerable question.

The real question is how do you determine who won a debate. What does a “win” look like? Sometimes it’s obvious. If one of the participants would have spent the night stammering or showing a complete lack of command of the issues, one could point to a winner. Neither did this last night so, we can’t use this to decide.

Further, which part of the debate did either win? Did Biden win the questions on foreign policy? Maybe but how do you measure that absent a knock out? Same with the economy, war on terror, and on and on. So then how do people determine, based on the different questions posed during the debate, who won? Do they keep score at home? Is the last questions, and who won them, stuck in their mind? Is their one or two questions that they remember and this clouds their opinion of the debate?

Finally, there is the question of preconceived bias. The reality, and I am guilty of this myself, is that if you were a Sarah Plain fan, she won the debate. Conversely if you’re a Joe Biden fan, he won the debate.

Some will ask then, what about the “independent voter”?

First, I will go on record to say that I believe this notion of a vast population of independent voters is grossly over reported. I have noticed that over the last roughly 8 years, there has been an increased amount of talk about independent voters. My opinion is that it has taken on the feel of a fad. I can’t help but believe that it has become almost fashionable to say your independent. You have the media clamoring over you and if you happen to be in a diner when the media stops by, you get on the news.

Now this is not to say that there are not voters out there who truly are independent. I believe there are, I just believe it is not in the numbers reported. Actually, I believe that a true independent voter is the best kind. This means they are not blinded by ideology, they look at a candidate and vote according to what they see. They’re a model really for partisans like me.

I believe though that most so called independent voters have an inherent political bias and ultimately vote for a particular party. You will hear qualifiers such as Bob here is an independent who voted Democrat (or Republican) the last three presidential elections. This does not meet my definition of an independent.

Back to our question though, what about the independent voter. The discussion above illustrates that polling this group can be tricky at best. The main problem is what kind of independents are they polling. Do 70% of them lean one way or another, this skews the data.

I think the bottom line is that barring a real obvious win it is hard, if not impossible, to poll on who won a debate. The polls are nothing more than something else to debate and gives the media the opportunity to slant their coverage, a chance the media is taking full advantage of, based on a survey of the sites this am.

The real answer is how they ultimately help their respective campaign. We can ask 400 people who won, or we can see who ultimately wins the election.

Almost more important, I believe, than who is doing better in the “who won the debate question” is the other questions in the poll. Questions such as

-Who was more likeable?

Like it or not, this matters in presidential campaigns. I think it’s an indictment of our system that this is even an issue, but it is. Palin won this on several polls.

So the debate will rage over who won but I feel it’s not a worthy way to spend our time because there really isn’t a good, definitive answer.

Here I am in fly-over land in small town America clinging to my guns and religion. Problem is, everyone has forgotten about us. I’m not disappointed mind you, we live in small towns so that we can be left alone to live our lives. I'm more perplexed than anything.

I actually live outside of a small town on 10 acres of pasture, hayfield, and wildlife. We have more animals living on our property than people. From deer to coyote, we have a very representative group of wildlife native to Michigan here. I live by a small town though and like small town life. Things move a little slower here. People, by and large, are a little more pleasant. Things can be quite exciting here also, we just got a Taco Bell and they are remodeling the grocery store. Going to football games on Friday nights, walking in the back fields, or going trick or treating in town where the mayor and the police chief hand out candy. It is a pleasant life.

The thing is, even though there are not many people living in this area, we are definitely not alone. In 2000 according to NewGeography.com, more than half of the US population lived in towns or areas of less than 25,000 people and 38% of the population lived in towns of less than 10,000 and rural areas combined. So there are a lot of us out here and my bet is, we vote. I actually could not find stats on this but my guess is that, due to demographics, there is a higher percentage of voting in small town and rural areas than urban areas.

Further, this is not to disparage cities. I work in a city. We lived in the inner city for 9 years. I was born and raised in an urban area. I just prefer small town life.

With all of this, I am perplexed, as I said at the beginning. I get why Obama made a snide remark about small town people clinging to their guns and religion, he’s an elitist idiot. What I don’t get is why McCain appears to be ignoring us. I would think small town America could put McCain in the White House but he doesn’t seem to get it.

 I am even more puzzled as to why they are hiding Sarah Palin away. She is one of us. We identify with her. Get her out to the county fairs. Let her meet with hunters, fisherman, farmers, we wouldn’t be talking about Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Missouri being swing states.