College football preview: November edition

It's a sports cliché to say that even two months into the college football season, we don't really know anything. It's also wrong. What do we already know for certain about how things will shake out before Daylight Saving Time comes to a close?

• Texas will play for the national title. The Longhorns have no more realistic obstacles between here and Pasadena. Who's going to beat them? Kansas, when it isn't busy losing to Colorado? Texas A&M, when it isn't getting plowed by a mediocre K-State team? The Big 12 North champion, when it finally becomes bowl eligible? Please. One spot is taken. And thank God it's not on Fox this year.
  
• The SEC champion almost certainly will, too. If Alabama or Florida pushes through undefeated, this question is academic. The more interesting possibility is if Alabama, Florida, or LSU leaves the Georgia Dome with a loss and a conference crown. Protests and caterwauling would issue forth from any remaining undefeated teams. But unless the loss is very late or very bad, it still probably wouldn't matter. The narrative of "best conference this side of the NFC" has emerged, and it is not to be denied.
• Heisman voters will make every possible effort to give it to Tim Tebow. Once again, this is a situation in which objective facts and reason are optional at best. Tebow is the best player on the No. 1 team, a quarterback, and a media darling to boot, which are the only real qualifications a Heisman winner needs these days. That said, a win by Colt McCoy wouldn't shock me. And for the record, Mark Ingram is this site's official Heisman favorite, unless Rolando McClain and Terrence Cody get traction, in which case it's them. A three-way split would be ideal.
  
• Everyone will forget about Boise State. This already has begun, with pundits vaulting Oregon into the top five on the strength of a dominant victory over USC, all the while forgetting that Boise State's win over the Ducks was just as impressive and would suggest that the Broncos are maybe, you know, better. It's not fair, and it makes no sense, but we've established that those aren't the guiding principles here. What matters is the ability to examine the full body of evidence and -- oh, look, shiny new thing is shiny and new!
  
• We won't see two non-BCS teams in BCS bowls. Not this year, anyway. If Boise State and TCU win out, their on-field performances would merit trips, but the rules of the game would guarantee a slot for only one (likely TCU). The other team could slip in only if Notre Dame loses again and if four of the six major conferences don't have an available at-large team with two or fewer losses. The odds against that are overwhelming.
  

Note: All of the above is subject to change. Because, of course, we don't really know anything.

Way to take a stand there, liberal media

Actual, can't-make-this-up headline on CNN.com right now: "Obama as witch doctor: Racist or satirical?"

Should posters portraying a black president as a witch doctor with a bone through his nose be considered racist? We'll hear from both sides, next!

Do banjos count?

Kentucky law still requires elected officials, in 2009, to swear that they haven't challenged anyone to a duel before they can take office. The state constitution says so.

I suppose I should take some small comfort in the knowledge that Alabama's constitution isn't the only one plagued by antiquated, embarrassing, downright weird provisions. But I also bet the Kentucky charter doesn't have near as much to say about dead farm animals. And let's not even mention bingo.

He also doesn't know Batman

Buried in the middle of this article is an amusing report on the interaction between U.S. Rep. Bobby Bright, D-Montgomery, and some elementary school children in Prattville last week. During his visit, Bright presumably talked about what being in Congress is like -- the coverage is scant on that point -- and then showed the kids the card that he uses to cast votes on Capitol Hill.

What seemed to interest the children more, though, was whether Bright had any bodyguards. And if he would say hello to President Obama's daughters for them. And most of all, whether Bright could obtain a presidential classroom visit by Obama. The answer: "Probably not."

Wonder if being the only House Democrat to vote against the economic stimulus package, the 2010 budget, the climate change bill, and the expansion of children's health insurance might have anything to do with that?

G-strings, pasties, and the Alabama Legislature

Alabama's legislators did what they were asked to do in this week's special session. They pulled Jefferson County back from the brink of immediate financial disaster. They used federal money to extend unemployment benefits for the growing rolls of jobless Alabamians. And they made it easier for school districts to pay for school construction.

They also approved, without a dissenting vote, a bill including a lengthy provision about G-strings and pasties. It will become law the moment Gov. Bob Riley signs it.

Technically, the measure would regulate alcohol sales, or the lack thereof, in Houston County adult entertainment facilities. It's a policy matter about which I know less than nothing and therefore offer no opinion. Two things seem worth noting, though.

First, our state government's structure is such that lawmakers across Alabama weigh in on explicitly local issues like whether to allow drinking in a given county's strip clubs. And second, the following direct, possibly not-safe-for-work quote probably will appear soon in local law:

"Attire which is insufficient to comply with these requirements includes but is not limited to, those items known as G-strings, T-Backs, dental floss, and thongs. Body paint, body dye, tattoos, latex, 'pasties' tape, or any similar substance applied to the skin surface, any substance that can be washed off the skin, or any substance designed to simulate or which by its nature simulates the appearance of the anatomical area beneath it, is not full and opaque covering as required by this act."

In fairness, I should note that local laws for many counties appear to be unavailable online, so G-strings and pasties might well be on the books already. And for everyone's sake, I'll save the discussion about the various kinds of clefts that can be found in our state statutes for another day.

Kicking the can ever so slightly

Well, that's done.

Alabama legislators, resisting the urge to lock down in tedious filibuster exchanges, got in and got out in five days this week for a special session to save Jefferson County from immediate financial disaster. They reauthorized an occupational tax that accounted for a fourth of the county's budget. They established a county manager and required quarterly budget reports. They saved the cheerleader and saved the world.

For a few years, anyway. The occupational tax will start to die in 2012 unless voters bail it out. As unpopular as the Jefferson County Commission is, and as unpopular as the very idea of taxation is in some circles, you could be forgiven for having doubts about the prospects for a "yes" vote. If the tax goes down, the county's cash flow problem is likely to re-emerge. And we won't even discuss that pesky, lingering $3.9 billion Sword of Damocles that is the county's sewer debt.

Questions of fairness understandably surround the occupational tax. Why should poor people pay at the exact same rate as richer people? Why is it OK for some counties to have an occupational tax but not others? And as we've heard most commonly, why should people who don't live in Jefferson County have to pay the tax? Isn't that taxation without representation?

The last question in particular might raise a valid point in a state with a governmental structure that makes any degree of sense. But in Alabama, where the question of whether a city is allowed to cut weeds is a matter for the Legislature, everyone across the state just got a say in Jefferson County's tax system.

If you look at the House and Senate votes on the occupational tax bill, you'll notice "yes" votes from Rep. Marcel Black of Colbert County and Sen. Vivian Figures of Mobile County. You'll also notice "no" votes from Rep. Robert Bentley of Tuscaloosa County and Sen. Trip Pittman of Baldwin County. Those areas, plus many others, weighed in on Jefferson County's occupational tax, even though, at last check, none of those places were Jefferson County.

So in the end, everyone had a chance to be heard, the votes were tallied, and the occupational tax is back on life support. Hundreds of potential layoffs of Jefferson County employees were averted. The county will have an added layer of oversight -- even if, as the Birmingham Weekly notes, adding a county manager will do little to simplify the county's finances. And all of the lawsuits and legal ambiguities surely are coming to an end.

Except... Wait... What's this? Oh, it's the Legislative Fiscal Office's fiscal note for the brand-new occupational tax bill. This should be informative: "An estimate of the amount of revenue generated by the tax authorized by this bill is undetermined due to the fact that a clear definition of 'compensation, excluding benefits, or net income before taxes whichever is less' is not provided in this bill."

Uh-oh.

A session more special than the rest

I can think of no finer way to drop $110,000 of public money than to convene a special session of the Alabama Legislature.

It can be productive. It offers loads of largely unintentional entertainment. And it's a second chance to go gavel-to-gavel without marijuana-related drama, or flooding of epic proportions, or editorials with epically bad legislative flood puns.

The arguments for a special session may seem obvious, but like most things, they look more compelling in a bulleted list:

• Jefferson County -- which, as the county where more Alabamians live than anywhere else, is kind of a big deal -- faces the budgetary equivalent of a massive heart attack in the middle of a debilitating stroke. And swine flu. Swine flu that mutated into Ebola.
  
• The state's prepaid college tuition program is in danger of being eaten by bears. Stock market bears, not literal ones. Not yet, anyway.
• Your child's school would like to invite you to a proration party! And then another one in October! BYOB! (Bring your own books, that is. There's not much money for new ones.)
• More Alabamians are losing their jobs every single month, prompting the state to borrow money for its unemployment fund. But at least we didn't take federal stimulus money for the unemployment fund. Because that would have required submission to outrageous liberal tyrannies like giving an unemployment check to a woman who had to leave her job to escape an abusive husband, or counting applicants' most recent work to determine their eligibility for benefits. Oh, and a hypothetical tax increase years down the road. As opposed to the certain one next year.
• Insert reference to the broken and unfair nature of our state constitution and tax system here.
• We're going on four months since the Legislature weighed in on an opposite-marriage dispute between a beauty pageant contestant and an entertainment blogger, both of whom live thousands of miles away. And it's been years since we double-banned gay marriage. If it weren't for our ongoing efforts to rid ourselves of the scourge of wine labels featuring classical artwork of nude women, outsiders might start getting the wrong idea.
  

Whatever happens, we should make sure it occurs during the most stifling, unbearable stretch of August. The one that proves that a bunch of liberal liberals and lazy polar bears and the Hawaiian birth certificate industry have orchestrated an international conspiracy to invent so-called "global warming."

And the one that's least likely to bring flood waters back.

I should pay closer attention to the hashtags

I somehow missed the news about how President Obama became our supreme religious authority and brutally cracked down on almost all forms of communication, leaving Republicans with no other choice but to express their outrage with a repressive, theocratic regime 140 characters at a time.

Then I read tweets from a pair of brave House Republicans, and the analogy became much clearer.

It's a sad sort of perspective

Alabama chronically underfunds all sorts of things: schools, health care, courts, public safety, prisons. You name it, we probably don't support it like we should.

But at least we're not California. Its budget deficit for next year is about twice as large as our General Fund budget, federal money and all. They're talking about closing most of the state parks and dropping health insurance for almost a million poor children.

There but for the federal stimulus money go we. And after 2011, there goes the federal stimulus money. Let's hope we're ready.

Have they no sense of timing, at long last?

Happy April Fools' Day, everyone. Maybe the Republicans' next attempt to unveil their much-ballyhooed alternative budget (version 2.0 drops today!) will include some actual budget-type content this time instead of proposals to slash rich people's taxes some more and just hope everything works out OK.

And if it doesn't, it's probably all Barney Frank's fault, anyway.

Funny how these things work

Remember, kids: It's beyond the pale of human decency even to consider refusing millions of dollars in bonus money to white-collar AIG workers for no good reason other than that their company would have collapsed into the abyss without hundreds of billions of federal dollars. They had contracts, after all.

On the other hand, it's absolutely mandatory that blue-collar autoworkers, some (but nowhere near all) of whom get six-figure annual compensation including benefits, be forced to renegotiate their pay packages downward for the good of the nation. They had union contracts, after all.

The snow-nado means business

Tornado warnings and snowstorms all in the same day. Gotta go with my gut and say that's distinctly not normal. Also gotta use this as perhaps my only opportunity to have a plausible excuse to link to this awesome video.

See you in March. I'll try to revive this place then.

Now it's time to get to work

I'm not trapped in a St. Elsewhere-style dream sequence after all.

Four years after signing on for another dose of overprivileged, ill-equipped, tunnel-vision leadership from George W. Bush, my country has inaugurated a worldly, intelligent, charismatic man from a modest background as its 44th president. It was a stunning about-face. It seemed too sudden, too drastic of a shift to be true. But it was real. I saw it with my own two eyes.

Further, that worldly, intelligent, charismatic president happens to be a black man named Barack Obama, which, as you may have heard more than once in the last few days, is kinda sorta a very big deal given our nation's history. As strongly as I believe that American history is a steady progression toward a more accepting and inclusive society, I hardly would have believed even 10 years ago that I'd live to see what happened Tuesday.

Over the last year, the Obama campaign and inauguration accomplished something I hadn't thought possible before: It melted away the cynicism that had become my default approach to politics. For the first time in my life, we have a president who I supported not because I saw him as more palatable than the alternative but because I actually thought he was the right person for the job. For the first time in my life, we have a president who has convinced me that politics can be about more than senseless division and false promises. For the first time in my life, we have a president who makes me believe that politics can be the American people's friend and not our enemy.

But now that Tuesday has become Wednesday, the glamour of ebullient crowds and inaugural balls has begun to fade into the mundane processes of governance. When the country wakes up in a few hours, we'll find that challenging times threaten to swallow Obama's presidency whole before it even gets off the launch pad. It'd be easy to look at what Obama has inherited -- two costly wars, a cratering economy, and deeply flawed education and health care systems, just to pull a few items off the list -- and throw your hands up in disgust, frustration, and hopelessness.

With great challenge, though, comes great opportunity -- opportunity to heal America's wounded international reputation, opportunity to restore America's economy to a sound footing that gives everyone the chance to get ahead, opportunity to come together to build a stronger America where everyone is welcome regardless of surface differences like race or religion.

Our nation's greatest presidents -- Washington, Lincoln, FDR -- have been the ones who took over amid great crises and rallied Americans to work hard for a common cause and a brighter tomorrow. There's no guarantee that Obama will have what it takes to join that list. But there's no question that he assumes our nation's highest office at a time when our crises are of the breadth and depth that gave rise to the great presidents of our past.

For all our sakes, may God help Obama live up to their legacies.

I owe this post to the historical record

With the ad hoc once-a-month posting schedule I've informally and inadvertently adopted for much of this year, an increasing amount of my decreasing traffic has come from Google searches.

People get here using all kinds of search queries -- check the series I used to do on the weirder ones if you don't believe it -- but a few tend to recur. One of the most common for three years running has been "Blount Countian," because the newspaper got mentioned in the comments a time or two and those posts quickly took their place among the most popular search engine results for the term. When people went looking for a newspaper website that didn't exist, they ended up here instead.

I'm pleased to report that that shouldn't be a problem anymore. All of The Blount Countian's editions since mid-September are now available for your perusal at its shiny new website, so check them out there. And then, if reading a blog is your sort of thing, feel free to come back here, too.

Not bad, as it goes

Barack Obama swept into the presidency in a powerful rejection of the Bush administration's failed policies and divide-and-conquer politics, even picking up an electoral vote in Nebraska.

Fringe, the best new show on television, is getting a strong vote of confidence from network brass.

After capping off a perfect 12-0 regular season with a long overdue 36-0 devastation of Auburn, my Alabama Crimson Tide is a game away from a 22nd SEC title and two games away from a 13th national championship -- and this after a preseason when fellow Alabama fans dropped their jaws in disbelief when I optimistically predicted 10 wins.

All in all, November has been pretty good to me. See you in December with actual posts, material, thoughts, effort, etc.

Playing out the string

Nothing has worked, my friends. Nothing.

They've tried to point out what a terribly arrogant, egocentric celebutante this Barack Obama fellow is, only to find out that perhaps running ads full of thousands of Europeans joyfully waving American flags at the very mention of Obama isn't the best way to argue against him. Plus, they totally got punked by Paris Hilton, an inestimably difficult task.

They've tried to tell the world how dangerously inexperienced and unready to lead from day one That One is, because of all the arguments that Hillary Clinton used in the primary, that's the one that helped her lose slightly less than the others. (Nota bene: Next time, consider arguments that won.) In addition, calling attention to 26 years of Washington insider status during a change election may, in retrospect, have been a poor tactical decision.

They've tried to let everyone know that for real change from the failed Republican policies of the past eight years, you need a brand-new mavericky Republican with a maverick like Sarah Palin at his side. Then it turned out, also, that Maverick 2.0 was for that Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it, and also had some novel ideas about disclosing public records, and also struggled to string together coherent policy statements or sentences under brutal questioning from renowned inquisitioner Katie Couric, also. Let's not even talk about that state trooper scandal, also.

They've tried to convey the gravity of the economic crisis confronting our nation by bravely suspending the presidential campaign -- except for the parts that involved giving public speeches and running ads and going to debates and such -- to return to Washington, D.C., just in time to take credit for the Wall Street bailout just before it went down in flames in the first vote. Look, what's important to remember is this is a crisis, which you can tell by the way the letters are italicized, and you should know who's tested and ready to respond to a crisis, even if it means misleading David Letterman a little every now and then.

They've tried to declare guilt by association by playing Six Degrees of Barack Obama with pretty much anyone and everyone.

They've tried to paint Obama, with his plans to raise taxes on the wealthy to start paying some of the country's rapidly mounting bills, as a socialist redistributionist who would replace the stars and stripes with a hammer and sickle.

They've tried to blame the damn liberal media -- John McCain's former "base" -- for taking everything out of context, even if it was aired from start to finish, and even if it was your five-day forecast.

They've tried, in all seriousness, to make the final weeks of the campaign a referendum on Joe the Plumber.

But nothing has worked, my friends. Nothing.

So before these final four days fade, fire up the robocalls, empty your arsenal of sports metaphors, and put your best ABBA album on continuous loop late on election night.

Because no pain -- not even a failed White House bid -- can touch you when the smooth harmony of "Dancing Queen" fills your ears.

What matters most

Chalk up Sept. 2, 2008 -- two days before Republican presidential candidate John McCain gives his acceptance speech at the GOP convention -- as the day his campaign gave its concession speech on the things that actually matter.

Proof? Let's go to an actual, live, on-the record statement from McCain campaign manager Rick Davis: "This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates."

Rarely do you hear a campaign of utter distraction spelled out so clearly. Still, just to show that we're good Americans, perhaps we should forget all about the economy, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, health care, education, the environment, and all those other things that don't help the GOP win elections. Instead, let's fire up the grill for some delicious mooseburgers and paste a picture of McCain's face on a hand puppet so we can hold it up over James Garner's head during a 24-hour Maverick marathon.

That's what this election is about, my friends.

Lessons learned? Here's hoping

New Orleans couldn't afford another crushing blow. Fortunately, Mother Nature appears to have pulled its punches there this week.

Hurricane Gustav was powerful and exacted a terrible death toll -- more than 70 people, including at least seven in the United States -- but in New Orleans, at least, it wreaked nothing like the hellish watery havoc that Hurricane Katrina brought three years ago at this time. Forecasters say Gustav will dump a bunch of rain on northern Louisiana this week -- after Tropical Storm Fay, we here in Alabama can sympathize -- but by and large, the worst of the storm mercifully appears to have played out.

One heartening thing to see is that federal and state officials appeared a lot more prepared for this storm -- and more publicly vocal about their preparedness -- than they were for Katrina. For a case study, look no further than President Bush, who spent the early hours of the Katrina catastrophe playing guitar with a country singer and eating birthday cake with John McCain. This time, though, Bush called off an appearance at the Republican National Convention and headed to a command center in Texas -- close enough to the storm-affected area to act quickly, but not so close to the danger zone as to be in the way of relief efforts.

On the political side of things, Barack Obama and the RNC organizers both have responded in the correct (and electorally wise) way, staying out of the danger zone, temporarily tamping down the campaign, and urging supporters to donate to hurricane relief groups. It was refreshing to see upper-echelon politicos with vastly different viewpoints on so many of the key issues of the day agree that some things really aren't political.

And it'll be even more refreshing if McCain pops the trial balloon he floated in an NBC interview wherein he said he might deliver a speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination from somewhere along the freshly devastated Gulf Coast. Seriously, how tone-deaf can a person be?

A great night for America

When it comes to politics, I can be quite cynical. But Thursday night, I got a reminder that politics still has profoundly good things to offer, still has moments that are deeply moving, still has the capacity to transform an entire nation of people for the better.

I saw Barack Obama become the first black man ever to become a major party's presidential nominee Thursday night, fewer than 50 years after he wouldn't even have been allowed to register to vote or enter a restaurant through the front door in many corners of the country. I witnessed Obama receiving a deafening ovation from a packed-out stadium filled with cheering people of all races and ages. And then I heard Obama lay out the substance of his vision for an America where everyone has a fair chance to get ahead, an America where our fearless freedom and peaceful prosperity make us unquestioned moral leaders in the world, an America where absolutely anything is possible through hard work.

I teared up a little by the end, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. Aug. 28, 2008, was a proud moment in our nation's history. Here's hoping that Nov. 4, 2008, will be even prouder.

Democratic veepstakes: 13th-hour edition

Near the top of the list of things I've meant to write for a few months now is a breakdown of the Democratic and Republican vice presidential contenders. Now that we seem to know the GOP's answer and are literally hours away from seeing Barack Obama standing next to his VP pick with our own eyes, it's a fine time to start emptying the archives. First up: a look at why Joe Biden won the Democratic veepstakes and a bunch of other people didn't.

Evan Bayh, U.S. senator, Indiana
Why him?: If you're into moderate Midwestern senators with executive experience who could put a traditionally Republican state into play, Bayh was your man. As a Hillary Clinton supporter during the primaries, he also could have brought some deeply disenchanted Dems back into the fold.

Why not?: Were personal charisma to be an Olympic sport, he'd struggle to qualify for the quarterfinals. Those votes for the Iraq war and the bankruptcy bill also don't sit very well with the base.

Verdict: On the short list. Faced Kathleen Sebelius for the bronze.

Joe Biden, U.S. senator, Delaware
Why him?: He has all kinds of foreign policy experience and likely will help with outreach to Catholics and older voters. He's also an amiable attack dog (which Obama needs) who effectively slammed the door on what was left of Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign with that famous line about "a noun, a verb, and 9/11," which has to be worth something in its own right.

Why not?: He cast the same Iraq war and bankruptcy bill votes as Bayh, though he later called the Iraq vote a mistake. In other news, at last check, Delaware still has only three electoral votes, all of which were going to the Democrats no matter what.

Verdict: It's him. And I don't mean in the way that pundits were sure it was Hillary Clinton, and then Wesley Clark, and then Tim Kaine, and then... I mean in the way the Secret Service has begun providing him a detail and in the way the Official Campaign Text Message® said so. As it turns out, he is the guy.

Wesley Clark, Retired Army general, Arkansas
Why him?: You want foreign policy expertise and a guy who could reach out to alienated Clinton supporters? Um, yeah.

Why not?: Mr. Personality and Mr. Political Experience he ain't. Besides, he may have taken himself out of the running with those remarks about John McCain getting shot down in Vietnam.

Verdict: Along with Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia, a favorite of defense-minded Democrats, but likely not strongly considered.

Hillary Clinton, U.S. senator, New York
Why her?: Remember the primaries? She got lots of votes. Obama would like to have those votes for himself this fall.

Why not?: Anyone up for reliving endless discussion of Monica Lewinsky, Whitewater, Filegate, and Travelgate for anywhere from the next three months to the next eight years, as well as round-
the-clock speculation about what Bill Clinton is up to behind the scenes today? Didn't think so.

Verdict: Despite the media's best efforts to shriek "Dream Team!" 24/7, probably considered only in passing, if that.

Chet Edwards, U.S. representative, Texas
Why him?: Because you're willing to take those 40/1 odds that John Parker Wilson will win the Heisman Trophy this season. I have no idea how or why this name ever got floated, other than as a favor to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Why not?: Who?

Verdict: McCain may have had a marginally better chance.

Chuck Hagel, U.S. senator, Nebraska
Why him?: He was an early Republican critic of the Bush administration's Iraq war policy, and the nation always claims to appreciate a little bipartisan spirit.

Why not?: Pretty deeply conservative on most things other than Iraq. Also, Republican. You try selling that at the Democratic convention and see how it goes.

Verdict: Pie-in-the-sky hypothesis from a bored pundit class.

Tim Kaine, Governor, Virginia
Why him?: He's a young, charismatic Catholic with executive experience from a key swing state. As for shared personal narrative with Obama, they're both Harvard law graduates with mothers from the same Kansas town.

Why not?: He's only been governor for two and a half years, and Obama really needed someone with decades of experience, particularly on the international front.

Verdict: Probably the last one out. Silver medals don't break ties in the Senate, though.

Bill Richardson, Governor, New Mexico
Why him?: He had the broadest array of experience -- foreign and domestic -- of any of the Democratic presidential candidates. He also would have shored up New Mexico and made things very interesting across the Southwest.

Why not?: His speaking style is dryer than one of his state's deserts, and the beard might rub some people the wrong way. (No pun intended.) The primaries also raised questions about whether his national electoral strength among Hispanics was overrated.

Verdict: I'd like to think he received much stronger consideration than he actually did.

Brian Schweitzer, Governor, Montana
Why him?: He's a wildly popular governor whose libertarian streak could have appealed to residents of Western swing states and to working-class voters everywhere. He also has some very interesting ideas on energy independence.

Why not?: Montana is small, and few people outside its borders know him. Plus, there was no guarantee that he even could have pulled the state's three electoral votes into the blue column.

Verdict: Fun thought, but likely never seriously in the mix.

Kathleen Sebelius, Governor, Kansas
Why her?: She's a popular governor who knows how to get elected in a deeply red state and who erased a $1.1 billion budget deficit in a year without cutting education spending or raising taxes. Her selection would have been a strong outreach to women, too.

Why not?: Kansas governors don't tend to have very high national profiles. They don't do much in the way of foreign affairs, either.

Verdict: On the short list, but lacked the global experience that Obama was seeking. Battled Bayh for bronze.

Putting this place in perspective

One of Alabama's most influential, most consistent blogging voices has fallen silent. My best wishes go out to Dan, proprietor of the recently shuttered Daily Dixie and the not-so-recently shuttered Between the Links. I hope we haven't heard the last of him, in both the online and offline worlds.

Bloggers, myself included, navel-gaze far too often, so feel free to skip the next few paragraphs if you aren't interested in that. News of Dan's decision -- and to me, it does qualify as news -- reminds me that in almost four years of mostly on-again, but (sadly) increasingly off-again blogging, I've had to overcome the urge to quit for good more times than I care to count.

The considerations have been numerous and predictable: real-life obligations, no pay for the site, frustration with the increasingly hyperpartisan nature of the blogosphere, lack of time, lack of motivation, and sometimes, lack of anything to say that I haven't already said better before. Blogging, like any other hobby, can consume huge chunks of time, and its nature is such that it can burn out its aficionados in a hurry.

Given how many times I've let self-imposed return deadlines roll by without a sign of life in the last few months, some of you could make a fine case that, in a way, I already have quit. But in my mind -- the arbiter that makes these sorts of things official -- this place is up and running and prone to having new content at any moment.

I have my hopes that "any moment" will come sooner rather than later -- and it probably will -- but whether it will be later today or weeks from now, I can't say for sure. What I will say, though, is that it will come in due time, and that it will come not out of a sense of grim obligation but out of a sense of cathartic enjoyment.

In the end, it's just a blog. And it's important to keep it that way.

Trying too hard to be cool is not cool

Look, kids, the Republicans know Paris Hilton and Britney Spears have enjoyed fame in the last decade! And they've seen those old Norm Macdonald sketches on Saturday Night Live where he talks about how much Germans love David Hasselhoff, too!

Surely these ultra-clever pop culture references, along with John McCain's avowed awareness of the Internet, shall be the final elements needed to establish the GOP brand as the choice du jour of the "it" crowd and thus worthy of electoral dominance this fall. Or maybe they can keep people from thinking about, you know, issues and stuff. Hey, it's a win either way, right?

The long-promised return to regular posting will begin no later than this weekend. Now that political reality seems more outlandish than the best efforts of The Onion and Stephen Colbert combined, I have too much material to stay away any longer.

Yes, he can... make it a little closer

The news that Barack Obama has trimmed John McCain's lead to 15 points in Alabama's presidential polling -- cutting the previous lead in half -- raises three notable points:

1) Despite all the caterwauling from pundits who really want a close race for the White House, this election is shaping up to be a solid victory for the Democrats. Obama is holding his own among independents, and even after a seemingly never-ending primary fight, he has a base that is far more motivated than McCain's and is consolidating more and more as the days pass.

2) Things have reached the point in Alabama that a mere 15-point deficit for Obama is considered a moral victory for the Democratic side. Considering Alabama is McCain's surest bet this side of Utah, though, this news can't be heartening to the Republicans. It also can't be good news for GOP congressional candidates who hoped McCain might have some coattails to ride.

3) I've got a lot of catching up to do. Three to four months' worth, to be precise. Those of you who have continued to visit have superlative patience, and you deserve to be rewarded with a whole host of posts. Tonight, though, let's start slow by breaking that unhealthy "one post a month" trend.

They'll run out of TV money eventually, right?

What have we learned from the Republican primary race in our state's 2nd Congressional District? That we need to fight some vast, nebulous liberal conspiracy. That we must despise all taxes with every fiber of our being. And that we should feel outrage over the prospect that someone might speak Spanish on the telephone.

Just seeing these ads on the Internet is a strong argument to give up television forever. Not that I'll listen, of course.

Wherever you are in Alabama, go to your polling place and vote today. You'll feel better, and it might make the ads go away.

The Alabama Legislature in 400 words or less

I haven't been around much lately, so I've missed most of the lively post material our esteemed Alabama legislators dished out generously this year. Fortunately, it's easy to tell the story of the last four months of Goat Hill action via the magic of bullet points.

• The Senate threatened to lock down from the very start after the ghost of the Punch Heard 'Round the World floated into the chamber, only to make peace after the most interested parties -- Sens. Lowell Barron, D-Fyffe, and Charles Bishop, R-Jasper -- made nice and made up.
• Then the Senate threatened to lock down after Sen. Phil Poole, D-Moundville, vowed to filibuster in protest of Gov. Bob Riley's veto of road money for his district last year.
• Then the Senate did lock down as everyone and his brother and her aunt and their cousins burned two full months of the session filibustering a local gambling bill.
  
• Meanwhile, House members, as per recent tradition, handled their business about as efficiently as a group of 105 politicians can, then waited around for the Senate to do anything -- anything -- at all.
• The Senate somehow found time to pass a General Fund budget, then dawdled on the education budget until the clock ran out on the regular session.
• Among the reams of bills killed that day: a plan to cut income taxes for most Alabamians and cut grocery taxes for everyone, a bill to ban smoking in most public places, a measure to add sexual orientation to the hate crimes law, and a call to set those wrongfully imprisoned hops free.
  
• Negotiators disagree on who said "no deal" to a proposed education budget in the regular session's waning hours. Regardless, when they opened the case during the special session a week later, universities found the $5 million -- written on a check to K-12 schools.

With that, Alabama got an education budget, the special session ended today five days after it began, and our legislators wished us happy trails. Seriously, the House closed the session by playing "Happy Trails." And yes, there was singing.

Lest you fear your love for ALISON will go unrequited until next year, though, there's already buzz that lawmakers may go back to Montgomery for yet another special session this summer. Because much like Goonies, our Legislature never says sine die.