Rappers want to be athletes and athletes want to be rappers. Singers want to be actors and actors want to be singers. Entertainers long to be taken as seriously as politicians and, as far back as the days when JFK was hanging out with Frank Sinatra and sneaking around with Marilyn Monroe, politicians long to be as cool as entertainers. The world of celebrity (or maybe just the world, in general) is all about the grass being greener on the other side.

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Moveon.org tries to bring a little reality to the current presidential race with this new, information-filled video. Here's the takeaway: we can't take this election for granted, because history has shown that smears work and polls show that voters don't necessarily know how McCain stands on certain issues. [JJP]

For scholars of race, Barack Obama presents a new American dilemma. On the one hand, his election as president would be a breathtaking symbol of racial progress. On the other, an Obama victory could prove illusory, doing little to dismantle racism while crippling their ability to call attention to it.

Once, I read about a similar problem scholars in the 80s had with the tremendously popular Cosby Show, which depicted a black family headed by wealthy professionals and subsequently gave hoi polloi the impression that the plight of African Americans was a myth. Are you prepared to face more "racism is over" talk from ignorant people in order to have a black president?

Barack Obama's nomination has been in the bag for months, but the Congressional Black Caucus, which was split down the middle by the contentious Democratic primary race, is still trying to get a foothold in the new political climate. Some former Hillary backers, like John Lewis, now wonder how they and their constituents could have ended up on the opposite ends of the spectrum. After spending their whole lives fighting tooth and nail for civil rights, how could they not support the man who would eventually become the first black presidential nominee for a major party in the United States? There are a lot of reasons why so many black politicians were firmly in Clinton's corner — they had a relationship with the Clintons and, like everyone else, figured that Obama would be out of the race by Super Tuesday. But then Iowa happened, changing the minds of voters of all races, but particularly black voters who had previously thought that the Clintons had it in the bag. And therein lay the divide. Voters were ready for someone new and fresh. Someone unlike the old-school folks in the CDC, those very same men and women who were left scratching their heads when their constituents dropped the Clintons in favor of Obama.

In a New York Times Magazine article that is well worth a read, writer Matt Bai asks the question "Is Obama the End of Black Politics?" I'm not sure, but it wouldn't be a stretch to say that he's the end of black politics as we know it.

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Wherein you, the readers, talk amongst yourselves.

It seems that liberals always think that the media is biased against liberals and conservatives always think the opposite. Recently, McCain has grumbled about media bias even though a recent study shows that the press treats him more favorably than Barack Obama. In your opinion, which way does the media generally lean?

Faced with a November election that will surely bring out a record voter turnout, local state and election boards are paying heed to a new study that suggests ballot redesigns are necessary to ensure that famous mistakes of previous elections are avoided.

Problems with confusing paper ballots in 2002, absentee ballots in 2004 and touch-screen ballots in 2006 led thousands of voters to skip over key races or make mistakes that invalidated their votes, according to the study by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.

"In the big election meltdowns … where thousands of votes were lost, ballot design was the primary cause," says Lawrence Norden of the Brennan Center.

Voting officials in Ohio, a swing state, are scheduled to be schooled by some "ballot design experts," who are raking in the big bucks this year, I'm sure, in order to avoid some common mistakes in the fall. [USAT]

South Africa – along with China and Russia – recently vetoed the US-introduced resolution to place an arms embargo on Zimbabwe and enact travel and financial restrictions on the nation's president, Robert Mugabe, who recently reclaimed his office by killing his opponents. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is very, very angry about this:

But when it comes to pure, rancid moral corruption, no one can top South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki, and his stooge at the U.N., Dumisani Kumalo. They have done everything they can to prevent any meaningful U.N. pressure on the Mugabe dictatorship.

As The Times reported, America’s U.N. ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, “accused South Africa of protecting the ‘horrible regime in Zimbabwe,’ ” calling this particularly disturbing given that it was precisely international economic sanctions that brought down South Africa’s apartheid government, which had long oppressed that country’s blacks.

So let us now coin the Mbeki Rule: When whites persecute blacks, no amount of U.N. sanctions is too much. And when blacks persecute blacks, any amount of U.N. sanctions is too much.

(emphasis ours)

Real talk!

Name any brand name media personality, and he or she will be tagging along with Barack Obama's convoy to the Middle East. Supposedly, the clamoring for a seat on Obama’s plane by the nation’s top political reporters is a foil to the virtual ambivalence about John McCain’s own trip to the Middle East last spring, where his stop garnered barely a mention on the evening news broadcasts. So how come Obama’s visit is being treated like the second coming of the messiah? Because dude is a rock star, y’all!

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It's the handiwork of Florida businessman Mike Meehan, and he's paid to have three of them raised around Orlando. According to Meehan, who says it's important for voters to remember to focus on the war, he is a proud Republican and "a man of God." What God thinks about using the deaths of thousands of people for political gain, nobody knows.

[Source]

Are you very interested in politics? Has this election made you more or less interested/invested in politics than usual? Why or why not?

[Source]