Opinion - HuffingtonPost.com

During my most recent visit to watch baseball at Boston's Fenway Park, I consumed a chili cheese dog, a sleeve of fries, buttery popcorn and a beer -- actually, more than one. At Beijing's Wukesong Basketball Stadium today I settled for a Coke Zero and yogurt.

Stephanie Tubbs Jones was a BIG woman. She was big in her smile, in her motherly warmth, in her blackness, in her womanhood, her passion for Cleveland and in her political smarts. I am grieving her loss today.

The Dark Knight, matching America's dark mood, has swiftly rocketed up to the #2 position on the all-time domestic box office list.

"Never before has our nation seen such destruction by nature."

Dear Mainstream Media,

Rather than face impeachment, Pakistan's disgraced President Pervez Musharraf finally resigned. So ends (more or less) America's first post-9/11 bilateral era with Pakistan, and the scorecard is utterly mixed at best with ominous prospects for the second era under Pakistan's newly-elected democratic government.

Republicans and self-styled "Christians" are agog over what Andrea Mitchell of NBC characterized as the "crisp, immediate, forceful response" John McCain gave to Rick Warren's question about evil during the forum at the Saddleback Church. They dismiss Barack Obama's "more nuanced approach."

Obama's campaign is really smart. They have the blogging and media communities jumping at every flick of the Obama campaign's collective pinky -- wondering what this gesture or that might reveal about who will be selected as Obama's running mate.

Sometimes, it's simply remarkable just how worthless our media is when it comes to putting remarks into perspective, especially in the context of politics, particularly presidential politics. It's hard not to wonder whether they are professional stenographers who sometimes double as journalists.

Shortly after Barack Obama and John McCain finished their sit-down interviews with Rev. Rick Warren, the analysis began. I was flipping through channels and a bevy of talking-head squares appeared on CNN, looking like the political version of "The Brady Bunch."

People who want Obama to win are heartened by his post-Hawaii willingness to object to McCain's tone, and to deplore McCain's ad hominem attacks on his patriotism and motivation, which Obama continued on Tuesday in his VFW speech. But it ain't enough.

A week doesn't go by in my district offices without some constituent, often several, calling in a panic about a personal health care crisis. These calls come not only from people who aren't insured, but increasingly from those who are -- or think they are. Most of the time, they are shocked and furious that, now that they actually need the coverage, their policies don't seem to apply.

In "If Clark is the VP-choice, Here are Some Contrasts with McCain" (August 16, 2008), there was a list of contrasts to John McCain, each one of which could have been elaborated upon to fill an entire article. Some were military, others character, still others "civilian." By all those accounts McCain pales in comparison to Clark.

I've read the comments. I know what some of you think. Yawn. It's not a story. He's not a candidate. He confessed. Who cares? Let's just recap the what The Deceiver calls 'the non-story' so far.

Fear is a fantastic motivator.

Obama's been to Hawaii. We're moving through August's hot days, cool nights. Everything feels in abeyance:

We can set aside the plotline that touts Obama as a visionary pragmatist who has earned the complete trust of progressives. The belief has diminished in recent months -- in the wake of numerous Obama pronouncements on foreign policy, his FISA vote to damage the Fourth Amendment and the like -- but such belief was never really grounded in his record as a politician or his policy positions.

Wow.

Now that the dust is settling the big question about the dust-up in Georgia remains: Why was Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili so stupid to start this war?

Revelations of an extra-marital affair two years ago by former North Carolina senator John Edwards has led the Democratic Party to not only reject the possibility of him running again for vice-president but to rule out allowing him to give his widely-anticipated address before the national convention.

Every year around this time, the Census Bureau releases one of the most important government reports: the annual status of poverty, household income, and health insurance coverage. The release is scheduled for the morning of August 26th at 10; you can usually watch the press conference over the web if that kind of thing turns you on as much as it does me.

I must admit that listening to McCain answer Pastor Rick Warren's questions so quickly and glibly last night at the Saddleback Faith Forum made me wonder if he somehow knew them in advance. He was so confident, so concise.

Here's my question: How is it that a guy who's devoted his young life to the pursuit of excellence stands to win a $1 million bonus if he matches an existing record, while a woman who devoted a nanosecond of her life to bedding a would-be presidential candidate and badmouthing his wife gets a $3.2 million home in Santa Barbara and a five-figure allowance?

At the megachurch known as Saddleback, Barack Obama and John McCain last night fielded questions from the popular right-leaning pastor, Rick Warren. The candidates were presented in serial one-on-one Q-and-A sessions (transcript) with the evangelical preacher, addressing topics ranging from leadership to human rights for fetuses to the nature of evil. That last topic was asked this way of each of the candidates:

Dear Republican and Pro-Life Friends, Thanks for the spittle-flecked emails as well as for the polite queries. Yes, I am aware Obama is pro-choice. Yes, I'm still pro-life. I also believe that with Obama in the White House that there will be less abortions in America than with the Republicans in power.

Toby Keith likes to brag, "This big dog will fight when you rattle his cage." But when my reporting on the pro-lynching lyrics in his song, "Beer For My Horses," began to complicate the promo tour for his forthcoming "Southern comedy" movie of the same title, tough-talking Toby whined to the media. "The song was a hit and the words 'lynch' and 'racism' has [sic] never come up until this moron wrote this blog," he fumed to Contact Music.

(General Wesley Clark speaking at Yearly Kos Convention in Chicago, 2007) General Wesley Clark is not attending the Democratic National Convention. I was told by General Clark's personal office in Little Rock that he would not be attending.

The media made a major issue out of insisting that Barack Obama reject Louis Farrakhan's endorsement - an endorsement he never sought from a person he had consistently criticized. When moderators brought the topic up yet again during a debate, Hillary Clinton pointedly demanded that Obama formally "repudiate and denounce" Farrakhan. (He did.)