Jarrett-Carter.com

If there’s one thing you can give Sarah Palin and the Republican paty credit for, its the fact that they don’t take too much stuff for too long. After a couple of weeks of vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin portraying herself as the town idiot in the national spotlight, the pitbull in lipstick pulled it together enough for last night’s debates to ineffectively duck questions, and turn the forum into a Mayberry town hall meeting with a flurry of “doggone its” and “darn rights.”

What party officials don’t seem to understand is that this thing called the Internet serves as the ultimately informational equalizer. Before, you could tell poor folks anything, and if you sounded like you knew what you were talking about, we’d believe it. Now, you can’t go three steps without everybody logging onto youtube or some social network to hear about the latest hot mess.

And mess doesn’t get much hotter than this year’s political race.

Literally, everybody and his mama knows that Sarah Palin is like the majority of Americans, uninformed and blissful in its peril. Where you get our attention is when you mess with our God or our money, and not necessarily in that order. The failure of Republicans is not that their policies are terribly stupid, but that greed is going out of style and everybody knows it now.

Foreclosures, wars and high gas prices have everyone seeing through the smokescreen of small government and moral fiber platforms. People are broke, and it doesn’t take long for you to get smart when you have less money than you used to. But instead of taking the cleanest way out and admitting “Look, we thought giving rich folks money would make it down to you guys, but this go round, it didn’t work out,” they instead try to ignore failed policies and rickety promises of relief by talking to you, the voter, as if you are sitting at a bar.

Let’s be real. Some people are going to admire that and vote for the McCain-Palin ticket because it sounds trust worthy. It sounds like things will be okay. But when you have Fox News conceding that Palin’s performance was more a “moral victory” than anything else, you know that exceeding dirt low expectations just isn’t going to cut it any more.

Just when you think you couldn’t get a national executive any dumber than George Bush, meet Sarah Palin. Her scheduled debate tonight with Sen. Joe Biden is likely going to be the stuff of legend for biggest and fastest public meltdown in American political history.

And don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Sarah Palin is an idiot for not reading a newspaper on a daily basis, or for not knowing more than one Supreme Court decision, or for even lauding her foreign policy experience as running the state closest to head-rearin’ Putin. No, the stupidity comes two-fold for Palin and the Republicans.

For Palin, because she’s too stupid to lie, and for the Republicans, because they are too stupid to replace her.

Palin must be so conservative, so entrenched in her own little world of all children being born and having access to handguns, that she can’t even muster the brain power to make up the name of a newspaper she last SAW. I read several newspapers on a daily basis, but if I were asked about one that I do not read, I would spin it to the ones I do read and have answer backing up that statement.

You don’t sit there and look helplessly ignorant about reading, when everyone knows you don’t know anything about the potential job you’ll have.

And the Republicans are sitting by watching this unfold. If I were a Republican, I would be near the point of heart failure knowing that my party was giving the election away. Perhaps its all a strategy for 2012, when Michael Steele will be ripe enough to trot out as America’s hope and black folks moral compass.

But in the meantime, its almost as if the Republican Party assumes that the majority of people like stupidty and ignorance. Perhaps the memo about Bush being the most disliked president of all time hasn’t reached their Facebook page. And yet, the ideals and idicoy march into St. Louis tonight like a lion chasing its tail off a cliff.

I’m fully expecting the deabate to be like Amateur Night at ‘Showtime at the Apollo’ for Palin, but the sad news for Sarah Palin is that there is no Sandman to pull her ignorant ass off the stage when she blunders and stumbles her way through the most basic of political inquisition.

Go easy on her, Joe.

By now, everyone has heard about Sen. John McCain’s plans to suspend his presidential campaign in order to focus on the economic crisis. What a lot of people may not know is that Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban suggested this days ago on his blog, and it appears McCain has followed it to the letter.

“Based on the series of events on Wall Street this past week, I am withdrawing my economic proposals. Once the market settles down, I will meet with Secretary Paulson, who has done a phenomenal job in handling this crisis, and gain a better understanding of where the economy is and where it can go from here. Based on that information, I will present to the American people my new economic strategy.

In the meantime, because the economic future of this country depends on the funding of the plan Secretary Paulsen has proposed, I will set aside my campaigning and work with my colleagues in the Senate and across my party to quickly get this bill passed. The future of our economy depends on it”

Well, from one Maverick to another, its certain an interesting turn of events. The man who can’t get David Stern to see things his way might have just changed the course of American political history?

I’ll admit, I’ve been out of the loop for a couple of days regarding black popular culture. Between starting my second year of graduate school and getting a new job, things have been kind of hectic on the homefront.

Not to mention the fact that I’ve got like 39 other blogs that need tending to.

So maybe I’ve just been away from the T.V. too long, and Rev. Al Sharpton has been spitting game that I haven’t heard about. Between the Republicans trying to call Sarah Palin a pig on the low, and Kwame Kilpatrick surpassing Kwame Brown as the most despised man named Kwame in America, I figured Rev. Sharpton would be front and center on these hot button issues.

If you’ve seen my boy, tell him I’m looking for him. I’ve come to rely on his blustery brand of rhetoric, dipped in thick and rising sermonic tones, and served hot over pissed off conservative analysis. He’s got a lot to talk about these days, and while I may be out of the loop, I could sure use a dose of that Civil Rights stuff.

For all of the bluster and intimidation tactics, the cool/relax of Sen. Barack Obama in his interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly on tonight’s “The O’Reilly Factor” proved a whole new side of Obama’s campaign, and a general futility on O’Reilly’s part.

O’Reilly tried to cut him off several times, he tried to box him in on pumped up issues of terrorism and foreign unrest, but Obama is a student of the Republican playbook, and it shined through in the interview.

The most strking element of the interview was Obama’s admission that the military surge in Iraq was “successful beyond our wildest dreams.” That statement could rub some liberal supporters the wrong way, but his classification of success as a reduction in violence was a good recovery. Obama wwent onto to say that while the surge has reduced violence, it has not encouraged Iraq’s independence from American military presence or American financial support, critical aspects of the American exit strategy.

Obama masterfully countered O’Reilly’s attempts at lumping religious and geographic sects together as targets in the “war on terror,” reaffirmed his commitment to national security and his support of the military forces, and even got a little snippy on ol’ Bill, on O’Reilly’s premise of diplomacy hypothetically failing, a scenario to which Obama tersely responded, “Everything is hypothetical.”

Too smooth. Can’t wait for part two. But here’s part one in case you missed it.

To an extent, a lot of the coverage received by Sarah Palin in the past 48 hours has been unfair. Inquiries into her daughter’s pregnancy, commentary that she couldn’t be a good mother and vice-president at the same time, and legitimate questions about the Republican’s leadership experience have been overwhelming since Saturday.

And yet, it is but a fraction of the friction Barack Obama has felt over the course of his campaign.

His religion has been questioned, his experience, and even his weight have been called in as potential roadblocks to his candidacy for president. And in the coming months, it will be easy to anticipate the kind of rhetoric that will be launched at both individuals on meritless assertions.

So when we discuss just how far we’ve come in race and gender relations in the United States, it’s no small guess that our journey as a country has indeed traveled many steps, but certainly not many miles.

These elections should show the world that minorities still have not earned the complete respect of the country. And not just middle-aged white men that run it, but their children, family members, media members, places of worship, friends and business partners. It’s not enough to call the candidacy of Barack Obama and Sarah Palin “historic” and “ground-breaking;” with these claims must come a level of social respect and responsibility.

Because what good would and African-American president do in leading a country that still is unclear about his religion? Or a vice-president that receives more criticism for the supervision of her teenage daughter than her management of domestic policies?

In other words, why give the majority of your hope to individuals while minimizing their credibility?

In front of more than 80,000 people in attendance, and millions around the world, representing generations of praying and wishing folks, Barack Obama became the first black presidential nominee in the history of the United States.

This moment, a moment that brought tears to my eyes and prayer from my lips, was like Michael Jackson on Motown 25, Michael Jordan in Game 6, and Martin Luther King Jr. on the Mall. Part magic, part miracle, and part majestic.

If you think that there was a more important moment in the history of black folks in America, you’d be hard pressed to find it. Because for the first time in history, the pain and suffering is commonly shared by folks who aren’t black, and that suffering is not racially based. For the first time, everyone is in need of something greater than what our times have required of us.

And a black man is heading the effort to meet the challenge.

More than any demonstration, life lost and ideal snuffed, this is the culmination of everything a lot of people have believed in. A chance to be heard and taken seriously, on a platform higher than that of quota or guilty conscience. An opportunity to be counted as a viable voice in the landscape, with the genuinely American experience that reverberates across race, class, region and religion.

It’s what we’ve been waiting for. And the best part?

Going forward, it is an example we can grow to expect.

Hillary Clinton could not have made a more explicit, impassioned and empowering statement on behalf of the democratic party than the one she made last night in Denver. From her opening statement voicing support of Barack Obama, to her noticeably brief acknowledgment of her husband as a president and not as her husband, to her appeal to voters to act upon their political conscience and not their individual loyalties, Clinton hit it out of the park.

Her supporters, however, are slow to get their gloves in the air.

There are so many components to this Clinton fever that ring honorable and delusional at the same time. For the same reasons that Barack’s nomination is historic and euphoric to many, the same should be reserved for Clinton’s legitimate run for the nomination. Were this another time and following a more competent administration, the respect would be there for her importance to the history of American politics.

But to waver on basic principles in the face of certain global tumult, to adopt a “anybody but Barack” sentiment over an “anybody but the Republicans,” approach has the color of stupid painted broadly about it. It was an aspect Clinton directly spoke to in her address, and effectively captured on the faces of Clinton delegates courtesy of C-SPAN.

Yet today we are bombarded with stories of continuing angst and dislike for Obama, made all the more interesting by the notion that Clinton supporters would rather vote against their ideals than for the remaining candidate that best emobodies them. Even worse, the discussion has not been advanced about the election from its very outset being hers to lose, which she did narrowly, yet effectively.

When given the choice, democrats, informed and uninformed, sided with Barack Obama.

Maybe its the media’s way of making the election sexier than necessary. Perhaps their intuition about Barack Obama’s global charm and the exaggeration of the democratic primary causes this stir in order for extended discussion and closely-knit polls. Unfortunately, too many democrats are willing to feed the monster of controversy and division, at a time where cohesion and unity would be the best medicine.

Hillary Clinton injected that into the party on last night. We can only hope that cells of jealousy and animosity don’t reject the good stuff moving forward.

Representing for Maryland’s little corner of the blogosphere…state comptroller Peter Franchot, ladies and gentlemen! A sampling of the money man’s insight from Denver yesterday afternoon.

For those of you in Denver, I invite you to attend the reception I am hosting tonight for the Maryland delegation at Dixon’s right downtown beginning at 9 pm. Our special guest this evening will be actor Wendell Pierce, who played Detective Bunk Moreland on HBO’s hit series, The Wire.

Wait a minute. Bunk? Bunk Moreland was the best Maryland could come up with? Avon Barksdale would’ve been a much better choice. Or at the very least, Clay Davis.

Still, Franchot in the blogosphere is a good thing. It shows that even in Maryland, the democrats are realizing and utilizing the connecting power of the Internet to pull this joker out in November.

I wouldn’t classify it as the most eloquent speech I’ve ever heard, mostly because she’s most eloquent without prepared commentary. But Michelle Obama’s address at the Democratic National Convention’s opening night set the tone for the world to meet the woman behind the fist pound. A mother, a sister, and potentially, the most influential first lady in the history of American politics.

She hit on all of the critical points that the media has scrambled together in the face of Hurricane Clinton hitting Denver this week; resonance with “blue-collar” voters, dismantling the notion that she is an “angry black woman,” and eliciting excitement about her husband’s platform of self-generated hope.

“All of us” are “driven by a simple belief that the world as it is just won’t do — that we have an obligation to fight for the world as it should be,” she said. “That is the thread that connects our hearts. That is the thread that runs through my journey and Barack’s journey and so many other improbable journeys that have brought us here tonight, where the current of history meets this new tide of hope.

“And, you see, that is why I love this country.”

The ease and confidence with which she delivered her address will go a long way in convincing undecided and perhaps unwilling voters that she and her husband are a certain conduit for change in the face of uncertain times. Not because they have all of the answers, but because they are willing to talk to folks.

She showed herself to be a patriot, but not of the cookie cutter, “God Bless America” variety. She showed working class roots without insulting the intelligence of those who know that she is no longer on their block. But most importantly, she showed her blackness without a hint of arrogance or purposeful intimidation.

Now that’s quite a hello.