"It is apparent Senator McCain has some disdain for Senator Obama," CNN's Wolf Blitzer said.

The attached video appears to show the snub, at least at first, but then McCain sticks out his hand — his left hand — like maybe he expects Obama to come back. Maybe he wants to exchange a special lefty shake with a fellow southpaw?? Watch the video above, then give your opinion of what happened in the poll below.

So, time for doubters to stop whining about Obama's supposedly cold, passive strategy that's keeping him from "sealing the deal." Right?

Maybe. It's certainly looking much better. Jay Cost at RealClearPolitics explains this nicely with charts and statistics, but basically, Obama's support has risen slightly through the two-week financial crisis, after holding steady for months, while McCain's numbers have been bouncing around like bedbugs since June and are now at low ebb. However, his support's gone mostly to undecided, not to Obama. With Barack at just around 50, there is still — barely — room for McCain to bounce back.

But wait - wasn't Obama behind? And now he's up by 8? Yes — in some polls, though the RCP average has him up now by 5 points, 48%-43%. But to read these polls better than the press usually does, ignore the margin. The key is to watch the separate Obama and McCain numbers individually.

First, Obama. Since locking up the nomination, his numbers have held to a narrow trading range — rarely below 45% or above 48%. He's occasionally flirted with 50%, but until this weekend, never in two trusted polls for several days running.

McCain's trading range has generally been a little lower, but more importantly, twice as wide. His volatility is a result of his shaky base — Republicans who don't like him, whether because he's not conservative enough or they think he's too erratic, too old, or whatever. When he rallies them, he's guaranteed about 46%. At his peak, McCain scored 48% after picking Sarah Palin (which then briefly put him ahead of Obama, who was drawing 46% or 47%). But numerous times, he has dipped into the low 40s or even below — down to 36% in several polls last June.

My own instinct is that the verdict on McCain's past week is mixed, and that after a debate performance some saw as winning, politically tuned-out swing voters don't yet see him in the same harsh light as, say, Letterman fans. If so, McCain can get himself back to 46% with little trouble and stay alive, as long as Obama is under 50% and there are still enough undecided voters to make up the gap.

A solid debate performance, perhaps, or some new stunt like pretending to "rescue" the bailout with provisions that "protect the taxpayers" the House GOP can support (on Thursday night, ideally, to distract from his veeptard's debate performance) — would let McCain bring back his wavering supporters more easily than some Obama supporters realize.

Some may reasonably think McCain has already permanently branded himself as a desperate, washed-up gambler holding his campaign together with flypaper and selfishly disrupting delicate negotiations at the exact moment when Americans are begging for a rational grown-up who'll take charge. If that's so, look for Obama's numbers to tip above 50 and stay there — which will mean that McCain has run out of road.

Until that happens, I'd keep the irrational exuberance in check. For the time being, I would mentally spot McCain 46% in any poll. Assume that the remaining undecideds could break two to one in his favor (yes, racism's a factor), do the math, and see if that still leaves Obama ahead. Right now, it looks like that's the case.

"What can I say? I'm honored. I would, however, like to take a moment to clear something up. Even though I got my start in theater, sang for years in The Baltimore Opera, moved to San Francisco and never married, I must tell you all again, for the hundredth time ...

"I am NOT a celebrity.

"Not that there's anything wrong with that... " See the rest of the results here.

As Slate's election scorecard puts it: "A post-convention bounce puts McCain ahead of Obama in a few national polls for the first time, prompting Pollster.com to shift its overall national trend from 'strong Obama' to 'lean Obama.'" Panic!!

Five Thirty Eight says, yes, the RNC and Sarah Palin energized formerly wary right-wing Christian Republicans and now they're answering more pollsters and identifying more strongly with the party and the ticket and more likely to call themselves "likely voters."

Right now, the race seems strictly polarized, right down the traditional, predictable lines, and it looks like Obama will try to win Kerry's states and hope for one more. He'll be aided by the economy, probably.

And it's stupid reporting or analysis to obsess over each slight shift in the polls (outliers aside, each candidate's individual numbers have barely shifted from the mid-to-high-40s since the beginning of the summer), especially when you predicted those bounces and setbacks.

Christian Bale could be the gay rapist because he already murdered his mother then salted the earth so no other moms could grow. Plus we don't know much about his personal life other than that he's married. You know, to a lady. Still, doesn't mean he's not a disco-dancing, Oscar Wilde-reading, Streisand ticket-holding, friend of Dorothy. The scuttlebutt around the big celebrity weeklies is that it was the American Psycho who committed the heinous act.

It could be Will Smith who got non-consensually jiggy because gay rumors have plagued him for years, reaching a fever pitch as fellow possible-'mo Tom Cruise led him (by which body part??!) into the dank recesses of Scientology—a supermarket checkout rack religion often thought to be a celebrity haven for gaydom and tax dodging. Plus he played a homosexual gay person in a movie once! The violence stuff would be news to me, but who knows what roiling darkness lurks in the heart of the Fresh Prince? Plus this guy says it was Will, though he implies that it was just rough sex play, not rape.

And then there's the compelling case of James Franco. Basically the rumor is that Franco dated the guy about two years ago, and still had a key to his house. Guy goes to an Oscars party, comes back and Franco is waiting for him and then awfulness goes down. He's rumored to have been abusive towards an old girlfriend, also an actor, some five years ago. This makes me sad because James Franco is dreamy and oh if he were gay we'd surely be married next spring, but if he's a raper then I don't want anything to do with him and he should be in jail. So. Boo. I dunno. He does do a wicked James Dean, who, as we know, was a buggerer. Plus, he's leaving the leggy blond bimbos of Los Angeles to go to writing school in New York. That's pretty geigh.

So who do you think it is? Take our Very Important Poll below and weigh in on this highly galvanizing matter. (And don't say anything stupid in the comments... it's a 'Mo News Day.)

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The Cocoon

Frank Rich isn't worried. His Sunday column takes comfort in the race's underlying stability:

As I went on vacation at the end of July, Barack Obama was leading John McCain by three to four percentage points in national polls. When I returned last week he still was. But lo and behold, a whole new plot twist had rolled off the bloviation assembly line in those intervening two weeks: Obama had lost the election!

Rich is a card-carrying member of the media's "cocooning" wing — Kaus's phrase for their perfect faith that the 2004 election was "Kerry's to lose" (as ABC's The Note had it). His column then ran through the usual catechism of reasons that Obama is better than McCain and will therefore win.

Curmudgeonly, right-leaning Russ Smith (the NY Press founder and longtime Mugger columnist), also isn't likely to be too concerned by Zogby. Writing for SpliceToday, Smith strangely decided to dive into the cocoon with Rich, writing that he didn't mind Rich's "bewilderment at the hundreds of articles claiming that Obama is in danger of blowing the election" because "there's no reason to believe that Obama has suddenly forfeited his formidable frontrunner status, no evidence that his extraordinary campaign team will repeat the disorganized, sullen and fractious effort of John Kerry's four years ago."

Smith's conclusion starts with an oddly familiar phrase:

It's Obama's race to lose, and if the Senator is as politically savvy as he's demonstrated so far, once the convention's over he'll let his huge salaried staff and untold number of volunteers register more voters and prepare for the debates with McCain, which, given the GOP nominee's penchant for petulance and botched facts, ought to pave the way for an eight-point victory and Electoral College wipeout.

The Point For Not Getting Too Worked Up

Because the media loves the sexy that dramatic new numbers bring, they predictably ignore all others, like today's Rasmussen poll showing Obama narrowly ahead, 47%-46%. Frank Rich is right about one thing: Since late July, the trend in the two daily tracking polls, Gallup and Rasmussen, has been steady: Obama has polled between 46% and 48%, according to Rasmussen, while McCain's scores ranged from 45% to 47%: A one- or two-point race. Gallup shows the same general story, although with lower numbers for both candidates (meaning, more undecideds).

It's more reliable to examine each candidate's numbers separately, rather than focusing on the gap between them, as the media always does ("McCain up by 5!" "Obama up 2!"). The press never points out that a poll's margin of error applies to each candidate's number — e.g., McCain's 46% and Obama's 41%, not the 5-point gap between them, and that that margin of error has to be doubled if looking at those gaps, which are twice as volatile.

Volatility, of course, is pundit gold: it allows the manufacture of storylines – for example, it will be widely said tonight that the Zogby poll is evidence that McCain's (dastardly, frivolous, misleading, as the pundits will intone) attacks on Obama's "celebrity" took their toll. Or, others will say, it's the crisis with Russia. In times of crisis, Americans will turn to a seasoned war hero like McCain.

And that is how the press creates the illusion of suspense and narrative fitting their own biases by focusing on the inevitable outlier polls. Probability theory holds that one poll in 20 will be flawed beyond the announced margin of error. Since there are many more than 20 polls conducted each month, the media is guaranteed a regular diet of outlier polls with dramatically different results.

Even so, this Zogby poll probably isn't deeply flawed. Most likely, it just didn't press the undecided voters very hard, to say whom they lean toward (you should probably put less stock in polls that report high numbers of undecideds). If it is correct, the poll most likely means that while McCain has now consolidated his Republicans (in early July he was polling in the mid-to-low 40's), with strong performances like last Saturday's at the Saddleback evangelical forum, it's Obama's supporters who are now shaky, for reasons having everything to do with McCain's attacks. It's hard to believe either candidate has a floor lower than about 46% — meaning that those shaky Obama supporters will probably come back when they have to make a choice.

The Point for Laying Money On McCain While the Odds Are Good

But Obama's decidedly not a lock. Here, Frank Rich and the cocooners are wrong: Obama does have a problem. In July, the outlier polls, which Rich rightly discounted, mostly showed spikes for Obama (as did, therefore, the polling averages) – and at the time, the Obamaphiles were ecstatic, proclaiming each 9-point or double-digit Obama lead in countless Facebook status updates. Now the outliers point the opposite way, Obama's lead in the polling average has narrowed, and Facebook is silent (unless, of course, a lot of your friends are Republicans).

Under their noses – doh! this always happens in August – he has been turned into one more abnormal Martian Democrat running for president, a meme dating back to "egghead" Adlai Stevenson. To a list that includes Michael Dukakis, indulging himself with a leisurely summertime tour of Western Massachusetts as the Bushites introduced the rest of the country to Willie Horton, and John Kerry windsurfing as the Swift Boaters went to town on him, you can add Obama summering in Berlin and Hawaii while McCain morphed him into an airheaded starlet. (To the GOP's frustration, they could never make Bill Clinton into an un-American, even though he'd demonstrated against the Vietnam War on foreign soil: the greasy fries and skanky girlfriends made that impossible.)

The real wise guys, of course, will think this whole discussion of national polls is pointless. "It's not a national election," they'll repeat, "it's 50 state elections!" Cocooners, who don't like the recent national trends, have been taking refuge in the RealClearPolitics electoral vote map and its "No Tossup State" option, which until just last week gave Obama an overwhelming 323 electoral votes, 53 more than needed.

The wise guys are wrong, though. You should watch the national polls, if only because they are more up-to-date and consistent in quality, and allow you to follow trends. The state polls are a lagging indicator – many are not fresh, or are done by local political consultants, colleges, or newspapers with limited polling credibility. Besides, the swing states tend to swing as one, and will follow the national trends. They are politically average – that's why they're swing states.

And sure enough: Today, the RealClearPolitics "No Tossup" map shows McCain ahead, with 274 electoral votes, four more than enough to get elected.

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The Clintons are proto-typical Baby Boomers - committed to ideals of peace and justice but overwhelmed with themselves. They (we, because I was born in 1948) are consumed with being the center of attention, the bride and groom at every wedding, so much so, that the ends don't simply justify the means, they are one and the same. Getting elected is the game, the final goal, the definition of self-worth. In his recent book, former White House spokesman Scott McClellan decried the mentality of “the permanent campaign” that he said permeated the White House of George W. Bush (the other Boomer president), which in some respects mirrors the Clinton behavior.

Sad to say, Bill Clinton became best known for the hallmarks of Boomerism – self-centeredness and permanent adolescence—as exhibited by the Lewinsky affair and all the other, lesser controversies and scandals.

The obsessions and legacy of the Clintons led to what the American voters thought was their antidote—the election of Bush, the boy who woke up and discovered he was President. Of course, they were wrong.

Bush’s exemplification of permanent adolescence could be seen almost immediately. The big new story out of the White House in early 2001 was his penchant to award everyone with childish nicknames, but there were other indications. Then, discussing the threat of Iraq in 2002, Bush said “After all, this is the guy who tried to kill my dad.”

We soon discovered that loyalty and clubbishness trumped experience and judgment, and an inability to admit mistakes destroyed credibility around the globe and three decades of Republican prestige in handling foreign policy. All the credit that the GOP earned through Richard Nixon’s efforts with China and Ronald Reagan’s tactics to successfully unravel the Soviet Union from within has been lost by the inflexible, inward-looking approach in dealing with Iraq and, now, Iran.

After 16 years, Americans have finally declared, state by state, caucus by caucus, primary by primary, that they have had enough of the Boomer generation in the White House.

In the final analysis, Hillary Clinton is smart, charming—and the wrong person for the times. Voters have moved beyond Boomerism. Now, Americans will choose between an older version of duty, honor, glory, and a return to the American Century vs. a new vision of global pluralism, diversity, change, and youthful vigor.

Is Boomer Power gone forever? It is impossible right now to say one way or the other, but one thing we do know is that it has, at least, suffered a serious setback.

^^Lame, wishy-washy cop-out ending. For shame, Zogby. This surely means that Hillary Clinton CAN STILL WIN THIS THING. SHE'S ENTITLED TO IT, DAMMIT, SHE LIVED THROUGH THE '60S!

Kevin Spacey Was Just Walking His Dog, Not Trolling For Gay Sex
When police came to the rescue of the actor in a London park at 4:30am, Spacey claimed to have been mugged while walking his dog. When asked what the bloody 'ell he was doing out and about so late, Spacey replied "you know walking your dog in the park is a perfectly normal thing to do, but you know I think that they are always trying to, you know, (say) 'What was he doing in that park at 4.30 a.m.?' My doggy had to go!" Right. He later retracted his mugging story, and claimed that he had fallen for a con in which someone stole his cell phone. He tripped while running after the bandit, thus injuring himself. He most certainly was not punched in the face after making advances on a drunken waiter, or, you know, looking for a little anonymous hump.

Winona Ryder Thought She Was Allowed to Steal Things
When the peculiar actress was arrested for shoplifting thousands of dollars worth of merchandise at a Los Angeles Saks Fifth Avenue, Ryder reportedly told a security guard that she was on the job, saying "I was told that I should shoplift. The director said I should try it out.'' Hah. It was research! For a role! Which makes it legal. Like when O.J. killed his wife and Ron Goldman because he heard Nordberg might be a killer in the never-filmed Naked Gun 44 1/4. Ryder, of course, later blamed it on drugs.

Lindsay Lohan Borrows Coke Pants
When the sort-of actress was in a car that was pulled over and was found to have Colombian marching powder in her pockets, she told police officers that the pants she was wearing were not hers. Implying that she had been wearing someone else's slacks for such a short amount of time that she hadn't yet realized that there were drugs in the pockets. We're not sure whose pants they may have been. Lindsay is supposedly cleaned up now, after several stints in rehab. Though we have no word on whether or not her trouser trading continues unabated.

Ashlee Simpson's Acid Reflux
When the "singer," who is the sister of sorta more famous singer/professional idiot Jessica, was performing on Saturday Night Live, she was exposed as an evil lip-syncer when the wrong vocal track was played at the top of her second number. She did a lame little hoedown jig, then slunk off stage. She later claimed that she had to use a vocal track because of severe acid reflux. The people of the world collectively patted her head in a condescending way and sent her, lack of vocal skills and all, trotting off into the sunset. She's now married and pregnant and, oh yeah, a terrible singer.

Eddie Murphy Runs a Hooker Taxi Service
When he got caught with a transsexual prostitute in his car, the comedian said "I was being a good Samaritan. It's not the first hooker I've helped out. I've seen hookers on corners... and I'll pull over... and they'll go, Oh you're Eddie Murphy, oh my God, and I'll empty my wallet out to help." Oh he's so noble!

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Which ones did we miss?

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God I wish I could comment on your gay blog...your commenters are fucking dorks and complete retards if they thought the last couple of episodes were genius. The last episode was so poorly written I was aghast. I dont believe there was even a semblance of a joke made through out the entire episode. Plot is stupid and non-sequitur, jokes are gay and stupid, Alec Baldwin is being wasted with this crappy material, which I cant even dignify by saying its trite or hackneyed, because most of the time it doesn't even make sense...Also, whats up with all the lame ass vh1/human giant/arbitrary humor/hipster comedians that are on this show? Tina Fey's jokes are completely nerdy and the type crap gay urban liberal art school grad white people would like....fuck this show and fuck your commenters. I applaud Robert Bianco for being a contrarian in an ocean of diarrhea that is the media that loves this truly awful show. ...Yes I know its completely pathetic that I would get this angry over a tv show, but its like the time back in college when everybody on my dorm room floor thought Armageddon was good...I basically made it my project to explain to each individual scene by scene why it was so absolutely terrible. Thank you for letting me get this off my chest.

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Hillary will almost certainly "win." Probably by a little bit or maybe a lot, but Obama is already managing the expectations game, just like Clinton does so well, so it could eventually be spun as anyone's win or loss. Oh, and also, she can't bridge the pledged delegate gap no matter what she does, so all she can really do here is convince Superdelegates that this last week and Pennsylvania's primary proved that Obama's a big failure. She'll need a pretty large margin, probably, especially since she didn't manage to get as much political traction out of this bitter thing as she'd hoped.

But this will all continue more or less unchanged for another two months, probably. And then McCain will win and we will have war with everyone, forever, or at least until McCain is felled by a rage-induced aneurysm and VP Charlie Crist is forced to take over. Then it will basically be a nonstop gay pride parade in America.

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xo, oh no.

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* Metaphorical riches.

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• "25 percent of all Republicans and 35 percent of all Democrats have had more than 10 sexual partners in their lifetime—a higher percentage than vote in congressional and local elections."
  
• "55 percent of Republicans have sex at least once a week, compared with just 43 percent of Democrats."
  
• "14 percent of Thompson supporters and 12 percent of Obama supporters claim to have sex 'almost every day.' 5 percent of Clinton and Giuliani supporters have sex that frequently."
  
• "On average, Republicans say they were 18.4 years old when they first had sex. Independents were 17.6 and Democrats 17.5."
  
• Everyone on Earth lies to pollsters about sex.

Of course, because good N.Y.U. students—though ostensibly rebellious and dark—are at heart just angsty urban Tracy Flicks, they also can't help but answer, the way that nine of 10 did, that people should vote. In fact, a big hunk of them even think their vote could make a difference. Aww.

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So the exiled chef was Brian Malarky, the ADD koosh ball of a chef. He's soft and harmless and kind of retarded. Good riddance. But really, Dale won? Le Bernardin's Eric Ripert picked Dale as the winner? Over technical perfection or Texan heart, he picked Dale, whose plate admittedly looked like a carnival? Also, that he slept with cowboys is A) probably not true and B) too much to know. That he was dumped right before the show, however, is completely believable.

We were so upset by the wan depravity of it all that it was not until this morning that we realized: Dale might really win. Last week, we thought maybe he was a genius. So sad! Now we must admit that yes, Dale, though every fibre of our body rebels against it, is a genius. Or maybe he just has Asperger's.

Not that we're abandoning Hung, whose tale of immigrant woe brought us close to tears. Nor are we hanging Casey out to dry. Her decision not to use her own personal stash of spices (as a result of her victory in the quickfire challenge) was ballsy and laudable. But if M. Ripert says Dale's elk is perfect, it is perfect. Dale might actually have game. (GET IT? ELK? GAME???)

I was shocked and saddened to see that 69% of the audience polled wanted to see Hung go home. Sure, he's pompous and arrogant and selfish. But why are those behaviors, lauded in other competitive arenas, so spat upon in "Top Chef"—which is, at the end of the day, no less brutal a test of man-on-man action than any a boxing match or island-stranding?

Dale's continued presence on the T.V. has also made us rethink our question to you last week of who will be victorious. So once again, vote for your choice. Not if they deserve to win, mind you—but if you think they'll win.

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