I’m now particularly glad that I sent $15 to MoveOn… this is damn hilarious.

We cannot expect one man to heal every wound, to solve every major crisis of policy. So much of the Presidency, as they say, is a matter of waking up in the morning and trying to drink from a fire hydrant. In the quiet of the Oval Office, the noise of immediate demands can be deafening. And yet Obama has precisely the temperament to shut out the noise when necessary and concentrate on the essential. The election of Obama—a man of mixed ethnicity, at once comfortable in the world and utterly representative of twenty-first-century America—would, at a stroke, reverse our country’s image abroad and refresh its spirit at home. His ascendance to the Presidency would be a symbolic culmination of the civil- and voting-rights acts of the nineteen-sixties and the century-long struggles for equality that preceded them. It could not help but say something encouraging, even exhilarating, about the country, about its dedication to tolerance and inclusiveness, about its fidelity, after all, to the values it proclaims in its textbooks. At a moment of economic calamity, international perplexity, political failure, and battered morale, America needs both uplift and realism, both change and steadiness. It needs a leader temperamentally, intellectually, and emotionally attuned to the complexities of our troubled globe. That leader’s name is Barack Obama.

The choice of Palin as VP could have initially been seen as an appeal to the evangelical base, to women voters, to small-town America. That argument could have been made, and while she was kept in a tightly-controlled, scripted environment, one could have almost been convinced that McCain and his party made a surprising, but effective choice of VP. Almost.

But now that they’ve let her into slightly less-controlled, slightly less-scripted environments—like news interviews—it’s obvious the lack of vetting and preparation that happened. The choice of Palin was a desperate move. It’s readily apparent to even the few Republicans I know that she’s just not that knowledgeable about the issues at the core of this contest. She comes across as entirely unable of thinking on her feet, only capable of parroting the script she’s already been given.

I would feel bad for her, for being so out of her league, but she did say “yes” to the job offer…

• I saw Barack Obama speak at the Xcel Center in Saint Paul the night he cinched the Democratic nomination. He is truly an amazing speaker and his intelligence and ability to inspire really does give me a sense of hope for this country. I’ve never been so in awe of someone in political office in my lifetime as I am of Obama.
• I’ve taken a few trips out to Chicago, for both work and pleasure, managed to make my way about as far north in Minnesota as it’s possible to go, and even ventured into Winnipeg (which was a pretty depressing city, from what I saw).
• I moved in with the love of my life, Hannah. Things have been going so wonderfully, and I am really, truly happy with where I am in my life. Hannah and I are perfect complements to one another, and we both encourage each other to be better people. I could ask for nothing more from a partner than what she offers me.
• Ali celebrated her 5th birthday and started kindergarten. I can’t believe how much she’s grown over this past year… or even over this past summer, for that matter. She loves school, and is doing very well there. I’m so, so proud of her.