Of course, when your job is to protect the President of the United States, and the first black one at that, it goes without saying, but "strong concern" is the default position. Early on, however, it was really, really bad: one such threat resembles most of them, and take a guess what kind it was. Ready? Yeah: White, former Marine, even had a name for it. "Operation: Patriot." Scary, much?

The Marine, Kody Brittingham, a 20-year-old lance corporal, wrote that he had taken an oath to "protect against all enemies, both foreign and domestic." In a signed "letter of intent," tucked away in his barracks at Camp Lejeune, he identified a "domestic enemy" he planned to eliminate last winter: President Obama.

Creepy white domestic terrorists are the worst kind of creepy. They're not even exotic. And they're predictable in their lameness, too, all creeping out of the woodwork whenever a Democrat gets elected to office. The White House and Secret Service, before Obama was in office, started intercepting a number of threats raising "deep concern." As the Secret Service almost never comments on procedure as a matter of policy—if ever—it's probably safe to assume this was a euphemism for "record amounts."

Though the threats peaked early, they're still trying to discern the difference in how seriously to deal with, say, the Arizona pastor who prayed for Obama to die and the airport security guard in New Jersey who has an arsenal of 43 guns and hollow-point bullets at the ready. That's this charmer, John Brek, who only went to jail for 29 days.

Interestingly enough, Rahm Emmanuel is the guy Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano—whose agency has overseen the Secret Service since it was taken over from the Department of Treasury in 2003—reviews everything accumulated by their Internet Threat Desk with every week. Rahm—scary in his own right—is the one sorting through these things, which is somehow reassuring. But there've been far more and far worse ones than we've been privy to. This is where it gets interesting:

A review of dozens of court records and police reports by The New York Times uncovered an array of cases, most of which did not gain public attention even as they rang alarm bells at some of the highest levels of the government. Some involved suspects with a history of violence or mental illness and easy access to guns and explosives, while others involved men whose menacing talk was ultimately deemed to be just that by the authorities.

You know the old saying: Guns don't shoot people, gun-owners shoot people with guns. Both are subject to malfunction and are terrifying. The number of threats against the President spiked again this summer, and naturally, the Secret Service sees the depressed economy as the impetus behind the increased amount of threats. Yet between the Party Gatecrashers incident, the report of the way-more-than-we-knew numbers, and the increased likelihood of this country spawning more and more people who are scared, angry, hungry and pissed with each dollar they find themselves short, we're a long way from any security climate resembling normal.

The further we go, the deeper the hole to fall: especially after the presidency of George W. Bush, which openly encouraged and provoked fanaticism and Christian extremism from the top, electing a black president was never not going to come with these problems. The only comfort anyone can take in this is, I guess, that it didn't stop people from doing so.

[Huge yawn.]

What were we talking about, again? Microwaves or something? Oh, yes, the radiation leak at Three Mile Island—that not-too-far-away nuclear power plant where in 1979 a partial meltdown scared the crap out of everyone. Saturday afternoon, an airborne radiation alarm sounded at the facility. According to CNN:

Tests showed the contamination in Saturday's incident was confined to the building itself, and none was found outside, Exelon said. There was no threat to public health and safety, but the workers were sent home because they could not continue until the area was cleaned, Bill Noll, Exelon vice president, said in the Saturday statement.

One worker was found to have received 16 millirem of exposure, and others received lower levels of contamination. The annual occupational dose limit for workers at Exelon plants is 2,000 millirem, the statement said.

Such an adorable and harmless little radiation leak. I mean, 16 millirems? That's about as much radiation as you're exposed to if you stand too close to Lady Ga Ga's hair. In fact the leak was so insignificant that Exelon, the power company which runs TMI, didn't notify state officials until 5 1/2 hours after the leak occurred.

So, continue with your lazy Saturday evenings, readers. We hear the Curb Your Enthusiasm season finale is going to knock your socks off!

(P.S. ALL SUPERSECRET SURVIVAL ARK TICKET-HOLDERS REPORT TO YOUR NEAREST SUBTERRANEAN ESCAPE POD AND PREPARE FOR IMMEDIATE DEPARTURE. BRING YOUR GUNS. THE TIME IS NEAR. WE REPEAT THE TIME IS NEAR.)

It's fine for someone to be quirky, and John Mayer certainly seems to be better than your average pop star, and/or prettyboy singer-songwriter. There's no reason for him to be giving rapey interview quotes.

You know that scene in Bull Durham, where Kevin Costner is coaching Tim Robbins on what to say to the press? This is it:

Exactly.

Stick to the press lines, John Mayer. Or at least don't come off as rapey. And the thing is, it's not like he even has to come off as rapey.

Fact: He is smart! Blues guitarists are notoriously sharp people. He can play mean blues guitar. Which takes brains and talent. When he isn't making his rapey guitarface.

Fact: He has done funny things that aren't rapey before. Like walking around in a bear suit before his shows screwing with his fans. Or riffing with Dave Chappelle.

Now, remember when he told New York Magazine that he'd basically rape Jada Yuan (or Mark Graham)?

....the next record will have that concept.

What concept?
More political things, worldly things.

Such as?
Nothing rhymed with public option.

You don't always have to rhyme, though.
I'm going to forcefully sodomize your editor.

Ha ha, so funny, except there's truth in every joke, John Mayer. We'll excuse it because if you have a good sense of humor and forget that there's truth in every joke, John Mayer, it can be pretty goddamn funny.

Now, a few weeks later, and John gets profiled by New York Times pop music writer Jon Caramanica, who is the man and writes great stuff. So you should know not to be a pervy-sounding maybe-anal-rapist when Jon Caramanica is interviewing you, John Mayer, and get on your game, and try to be taken relatively seriously, because you could get a very, very great piece of press in a big publication by a talented pop music writer, right?

Caramanica's lede, in a piece called, John Mayer Just Has to Please the Girls:

"I should be having sex with more girls." This is what John Mayer concluded, using slightly more colorful language, last Sunday night at his anonymously modern apartment in SoHo.

Okay, so,
lives in a sparse modernist apartment,
makes jokes about anal rape (or "forcible sodomy"),
thinks he should be having sex with more women,
is a famous rock star.

Oh, and this:

"It's crazy to me that in my head, that being 32 and dating women is going to get me in trouble," he said, talking faster as he went along. "I can't even explain to you how terrible that feels, that I equate dating a woman with punishment, shame, guilt, disappointment, reproach, reprimand, persecution. It's a nightmare."

Who has these issues? John Mayer has shame about dating women and getting in trouble? No. Fucking no! Telling young, female New York reporters you're going to anally rape their editors will get you in *trouble! From where does your "shame" come from John Mayer? HM?! Are you hiding something?!

Hopefully, John Mayer is not Patrick Bateman.

That said, Caramanica's piece ends like so. You be the judge:

At the encore, though, he let the public invade the private. "They say I'm a womanizer," he complained. "I say I haven't met enough women." The crowd cheered. Shrieked, really. Maybe things weren't so bad after all. "Cute girl," Mr. Mayer said, pointing into the sea of eager faces. "Cute girl. Cute girl. Kuh-yoot girl."

*John Mayer is welcome to tell me he will forcibly rape my editors, since all seven of them are all older men, and I see the humor in that. All seven of them.
**There is maybe truth in every joke, John Mayer.

Yet again, Nouriel Roubini inspires in us a palpable fear using nothing but words and numbers with his latest column in the Daily News. Only this time, he specifically targets those 15.7 million unemployed Americans who would dare believe that they might once again be productive members of society:

Think the worst is over? Wrong....

The last recession ended in November 2001, but job losses continued for more than a year and half until June of 2003; ditto for the 1990-91 recession.

So we can expect that job losses will continue until the end of 2010 at the earliest. In other words, if you are unemployed and looking for work and just waiting for the economy to turn the corner, you had better hunker down. All the economic numbers suggest this will take a while. The jobs just are not coming back.

Roubini has completed his transformation into a vampire who feeds on the hopes and dreams of the unemployed in order to fund his personal International Hunnietary Fund. What better time to look back on the myriad ways he has for the past year informed us that America has no more money and never will again?

ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE

Date:February 15
Article: "Nationalize the Banks! We're all Swedes Now" (The Washington Post)
Dow Average: 7,889
Passage of Doom:

$7 trillion — including commercial real estate loans, consumer credit-card debt and high-yield bonds and leveraged loans — is at risk of losing much of its value. Then there are trillions more in high-grade corporate bonds and loans and jumbo prime mortgages, whose worth will also drop precipitously as the recession deepens and more firms and households default on their loans and mortgages.

Date: February 28
Article: "The L Curve" (The New York Times)
Dow Average:7,026
Passage of Doom:

Even if appropriate aggressive policy actions were undertaken... the growth rate would not rise closer to 2 percent until 2011. So this recession may last 36 months.

And things could get worse. We now face a 1 in 3 chance that, if appropriate policies are not put in place, this ugly U-shaped recession may turn into a more virulent L-shaped near-depression or stag-deflation (a deadly combination of economic stagnation and price deflation) like the one Japan experienced in the 1990s after its real estate and equity bubbles burst.

Date: May 5
Article:"We can't Subsidize the Banks Forever" (The Wall Street Journal)
Dow Average:8,411
Passage of Doom:

[The government's] overall message is that the sector is in pretty good shape.

This would be good news if it were credible. But the International Monetary Fund has just released a study of estimated losses on U.S. loans and securities. It was very bleak — $2.7 trillion, double the estimated losses of six months ago. Our estimates at RGE Monitor are even higher, at $3.6 trillion, implying that the financial system is currently near insolvency.

Date: November 1
Article:"Mother of all carry trades faces an inevitable bust"(Financial Times)
Dow Average:9,712
Passage of Doom:

one day this bubble will burst, leading to the biggest co-ordinated asset bust ever: if factors lead the dollar to reverse and suddenly appreciate – as was seen in previous reversals, such as the yen-funded carry trade – the leveraged carry trade will have to be suddenly closed as investors cover their dollar shorts. A stampede will occur as closing long leveraged risky asset positions across all asset classes funded by dollar shorts triggers a co-ordinated collapse of all those risky assets.

(That last one is only scary if you know what a "carry trade" is—but then it's really terrifying.)

Lindsay Lohan and momager Dina have made it very, very clear that the order of protection they have against Michael means that he needs to stay as far away from them as he can. He's wiretapped conversations with Dina and tried to sell them. They're getting orders of protection and are telling the press they're scared. And Michael's hitting the press trail with everyone who'll listen.

But this is a little too intense. Sure, Michael Lohan looks like a bad James Woods character, and there's no question that he's desperate to be a power-barnacle on his family's dwindling resources of fame. But the taping of calls proves the criminal length to which he's willing not to help, but to go public with his "cause" in order to draw attention to himself. All of this begs the question: if Lohan actually needs help, how would Michael Lohan even know?

It doesn't matter. Because when you do shit like this, even if they're just for theatrics, you're insane, and possibly, dangerous, and even worse, shameless about how dangerously insane you are in the name of "protecting" your daughter while trying to invoke a higher power to electrocute you.

Hollywood gossip is a joke and the people who take it seriously are just as funny, and the fact that there's a massive industry built around it is hysterical if you can laugh through the sadness. I'm of the opinion that one shouldn't take it as anything but a big, sad joke. And it's hard to feel bad for one of that big joke's biggest characters, Lindsay Lohan, and her self-subscribed fates.

But here's someone who's already had a long, long life, no matter who made it hard. And of all the things Lindsay Lohan did to herself, I still can't imagine actually being able to will something like Michael Lohan into their existence repeatedly. Unless their name is Dina Lohan.

Now I feel bad for her.

Here are a few of the most terrifying responses to the terrifying question asked by the LA Times: "Have you experienced sudden acceleration in a Toyota?":

3/30/2006 My Solara completely lost control while trying to brake.I did 2 complete 360s, hit a concrete wall and landed in a mud ditch.$10,000 dollars worth of damage and 3 weeks later the only thing Toyota told me that it was driver error. This car had a mind of it's own. -Janet Cobb

I work for a law firm and we have a case where 4 young adults were in Lexus and could not stop the care after it accelerated on the freeway, they ended up hitting the concrete bridge and the car burned up with all 4 people in it. All killed. -Patricia

i own a 2009 Toyota Venza and i just ran through a restuarant no one was hurt but it could have been worst my car just took off Toyota checked my car out and said thay could not find anything i am scared to drive it now. -JM

The next generation Prius: Saving the planet by killing the people who are ruining it.

Via Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley and and Neighborhoodr: apparently, there were/are two taxis underneath that mess. Police and firemen are on the scene.

Scaffolding collapses don't happen so often in New York, but they definitely do happen enough to make you want to walk a little more briskly under it if you have to; this scaffolding (right in front of The Gap, which it apparently wanted to fall into) is in a snazzy location that sees lots of tourists. It's essentially next to a subway stop, too.

So: enjoy your Monday commute! In fear.

Update: New York Post reporter Justin Rocket Silverman Twitters:

Two taxis crash, spin, and bring down and a scaffolding on Broadway and 8th. Mailbox is down too. Ouch!

Oh, even better. Dueling taxis making scaffolding collapse. Remind me when Astor Place-ish became Death Race 3000? Super.

[Top image by Jesse Chan-Norris.]

Update 2: "As many as eight" hijackers were arrested. Multiple reports say one of them spent the whole flight clutching a Bible. One passenger says the hijacker was "a Bible fanatic from Bolivia." So, there you have it: now we have to watch out for Bolivian Bible-thumpers.

Update: The crew is now free. Calderon is on his way back to Mexico City. The plane was flying from Cancun to Mexico City (and then Cabo and then San Diego) when it was hijacked by three (still possibly four) Bolivian men. Passengers largely didn't know the plane had been hijacked until it landed and was surrounded by Federal Police. The Federales stormed the plane and took some passengers off. At least one person been detained, and three men have been brought off in handcuffs, according to police. If that's true, this is probably over. But it is still unclear how many people are on that plane.

According to reporting on Fox, the hijackers were four Colombian men (CNN says possibly Bolivian), they claimed to have a bomb, and they demanded to talk to Mexican President Felipe Calderon. It has not been officially confirmed that all the passengers have been allowed to leave, and Mexican federal police and military personnel are on the scene.

Early reports suggest this is drug cartel-related. The pilots and flight crew are reportedly still on board.

Oh, you know, nothing that isn't going to (A) make the rest of the world think Americans' we-won't-but-we-will play of turn-a-cheek policy regarding torture wasn't historically despicable, (B) cause much quasi-self-effacing hand wringing by all sides, and (C) piss the Bad Guys off even more. Like:

According to two sources-one who has read a draft of the paper and one who was briefed on it-the report describes how one detainee, suspected USS Cole bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, was threatened with a gun and a power drill during the course of CIA interrogation. According to the sources, who like others quoted in this article asked not to be named while discussing sensitive information, Nashiri's interrogators brandished the gun in an effort to convince him that he was going to be shot. Interrogators also turned on a power drill and held it near him.

Yeah, so basically, we threatened guys with trepanation. Don't tell us the information you've already told us you don't have after we've knowingly permanently traumatized you, and we'll put this drill in your skull. There's a Beavis & Butthead element to this, somewhere: it's some absurd - a power drill? - but sadly, not, because it actually happened. They even put on a little dog and pony for the detainees by harnessing the power of the theatah!

The report also says, according to the sources, that a mock execution was staged in a room next to a detainee, during which a gunshot was fired in an effort to make the suspect believe that another prisoner had been killed. The inspector general's report alludes to more than one mock execution.

Will Eno would be proud! Or something. Talk about breaking the fourth wall. Or the law. Or human dignity. Or protocol. Apparently, Mock Executions "weren't authorized" by the Justice Department, so don't even think of blaming them for it. At least you know what the party line's already going to be. Like all the other terrible things happening in the U.S. military these days: don't ask, don't tell. Or in this case: don't even think about it.

The Church of Scientology has had a string of particularly bad press lately: there was that entire report on one of their most public members, John Travolta, wanting to maybe leave it behind, and the scary, staunch out-and-out denial put out by his flack.

Now, there're a bunch of defectors coming out of the woodwork to talk to one of Scientology's most mainstream critics, the St. Petersburg Times. Much of the criticism from defectors is still being lobbed squarely at Miscavige. Many of them are being reported by the SPT as feeling more secure in coming out now that high ranking defectors - the ones previously interviewed by the paper - are telling their story. One of the more frightening parts:

(Steve) Hall joined the church marketing unit in 1987, which brought him into more frequent contact with Miscavige, who holds the title Chairman of the Board, or COB. Hall said it was a shock the first time he saw Miscavige attack an executive, Ray Mithoff. The second time was like something out of a cartoon. Hall says Miscavige came up behind two seated executives - Marc Yager and Guillaume Lesevre - grabbed their heads and banged them together. Then he ground them against each other. Lesevre had blood coming out of his ear.

This story corroborates earlier reports, though surely, you can look at any of this stuff with a healthy amount of skepticism: a newspaper has a great scoop on a story, because they're located within immediate proximity of it. The SPT has a long history with Scientology, and has always been coming up with this stuff. But Scientology seems to take the SPT's claims very, very seriously, and each time, their denials of their articles get more vehement, which, of course, the paper runs in full.

The Church of Scientology provided 25 affidavits and declarations from current and former church executives and staffers who uniformly describe David Miscavige as a kind, compassionate, inspiring leader who never has been violent or abusive, physically or mentally. Yael Lustgarten's statement was typical. "In all the times I have worked with Mr. Miscavige or seen him working with others, I have never known him to be furious, mad, pissed off, much less hit, punch, kick, slap, choke, push, or inflict any form of abuse," wrote Lustgarten, who left the church staff in 2004 after 18 years. "I never witnessed that, ever."

So, essentially, the conflict with reporting on Scientology boils down to: ex-members talking, and the Church of Scientology trotting out denials and members who talk about what a gem Miscavige is.

Maybe if there was video or audio of this kind of thing, somewhere - a definitive audio/visual presentation of Miscavage's insanity - like so many of the other internal videos Scientology's tried to keep under wraps, stories like this one:

Miscavige punished top staffers Norman Starkey and Greg Wilhere, ordering them to camp out in tents for days in a high, open area of the mountainside base, near the Bonnie View mansion built for Hubbard. They were assigned hard labor and forced to shower with a garden hose.

This one:

As many as 400 staffers were summoned to the mess hall, where a small group of staffers were given special seats of dishonor. Church executives would introduce them with scorching assessments of their recent performance. "They had to get up one at a time into a microphone and confess their crimes," said Jeff Hawkins, who left the Sea Org in 2005. The crowd screamed and jeered.

And this one:

Miscavige drew close. "We're standing there sort of at attention. He looks at me, he looks at Rinder. He looks at me, he looks back at Rinder. And then suddenly, with violence, he flashed his arms up and grabbed Mike Rinder's head and body-slammed his head into the cherry wood cabinets. "He lifted Mike Rinder nearly off of his feet and smashed his head into the wall, and he banged his head into the wall three times, just BANG, BANG, BANG!"

would be viewed with significantly less skepticism. And if it's any incentive, I'm sure my boss is willing to pony up for one. It's the one piece of the puzzle that's missing, and I don't doubt we're the only ones who want to see it.

Strength in their numbers: More Church of Scientology defectors come forward with accounts of abuse [St. Petersburg Times]

Church of Scientology's response: 'Character assassination' by liars [St. Petersburg Times]

A website called Irish Central claims to have a source in the police department - and, come on, it's New York, of course they do - detailing the city's cops disbelief with what the young star's security detail has on their hands, and even more, the fact that they think they're at all capable of dealing with it.

"Enough is enough," said a highly-placed official at Police Headquarters. "His security people aren't up to the task of keeping him safe, and they have no idea how to deal with the crowds this guy attracts." The source pointed to a well-publicized incident in which Pattinson ran from a crowd of admirers and was slightly injured when he was struck by a taxi.

"That's amateur hour," the police spokesman said. "We have celebrities a lot bigger than this guy who can come and go in perfect safety because we know how to take the right precautions. We have presidents and kings come and go. This poor kid can't get in or out of a car without things getting dangerous."

The post goes further into detail about how overwhelmed his current protection is, and how they don't know how to deal with the massive crowds that show up wherever he goes. Pattinson's also apparently fairly disturbed by the attention he attracts, which, besides being inconvient and scary, is also a source of embarrassment to him. And honestly, if I were followed by Twilight fans wherever I went, I'd be embarrassed, too. Pattinson's probably still cursing JK Rowling for (SPOILER ALERT) killing his character in the fourth film in the Harry Potter series. If only he could go back to a time more magical, less, uh, psychologically fraught with emotional peril.

Young Pattinson already hates the women of New York for trying to murder him. He tried buying one of his stalkers dinner, it didn't work. He stalkers have proven themselves to generally be sexually charged alcoholic ragers. It really is out of control. Yeah, he's a bankable movie star and fine as far as genetics go. But he seems to be an otherwise nice, normal guy who invokes the hidden sexual pathos (which then manifests into bloodthirst) of what might sometimes be fairly normal human beings. Until he does receive his police protection, he can go with the whole cross/garlic combo to stave off the bloodthirsty Spinsters In Training. Or at least get a stun gun.

'Twilight' star Pattinson may be in N.Y. Police Department's spotlight [Irish Central]

Los Angeles County health officials said Thursday that at least 16 additional unpublicized cases of HIV have been confirmed in adult film performers.

The newly released data bring the number of HIV cases in porn performers in the last five years to 22, including the case disclosed this week.

In 2004, a porn star named Darren James shut down the entire porn industry for a month after he infected three of his co-stars with HIV. Health advocates are using this new disclosure as an opportunity to push for mandatory condoms in all porn shoots. The porn industry responds, collectively, "No." Although:

Since 2004, 2,378 people who identified themselves as adult film industry performers have tested positive for chlamydia in Los Angeles County. An additional 1,357 tested positive for gonorrhea and 15 for syphilis, according to data released Thursday by the county's health department.

What is porn about if not safety and health?
[LAT]

Draper notes that the briefings were "a daily digest of critical military intelligence so classified that it circulated among only a handful of Pentagon leaders and the president; Rumsfeld himself often delivered it, by hand, to the White House." You have to wonder: was Rumsfeld sitting over a well-to-do Department of Defense intern, going through loads of pictures and trying to decide what colors he wanted which quotes to be? Or did he do it himself? Either way, these things have more in common with the Zodiac Killer than anything any kind of defense briefing should even remotely look like. Graphic designers, turn away. These aren't pretty, in so many ways.

And He Shall Be Judged [GQ]

The Times put that gambling story on the front page even though there didn't seem to be that much to it. Now Keller admits, basically, that they did it because the McCain campaign was bothering them. So, obviously, then they had to be fair and put some sort of theoretically damaging Obama story on the front page a week later! And they did, with Obama and ’60s Bomber: A Look Into Crossed Paths, the story of how goofy '60s Weatherman Bill Ayers cleaned up and went legit and eventually served on a non-profit board with Barack Obama, which means Obama is a terrorist. Like, seriously, this is what they concluded:

A review of records of the schools project and interviews with a dozen people who know both men, suggest that Mr. Obama, 47, has played down his contacts with Mr. Ayers, 63. But the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called “somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.”

NOW the increasingly, incredibly detestable Sarah Palin is standing before huge angry frothing crowds saying "I read in the New York Times" (BOOOOOO) "that Barack Hussein Osama is a terrorist" (BOOOOOOOOO) "so let's form a posse and kill the liberal media" (YAAAAAY). And, honestly, it's a desperate campaign in self-destruct mode, but that doesn't make it less disgusting and scary, that a major party is engaging in this kind of rhetoric unashamedly before these kinds of crowds.

And it's all the Times fault, just like everything else.

Google has filed a patent application for "water based data centres," which would be huge ships full of supercomputers floating seven miles offshore, using the motion of the ocean to power and cool themselves, nefariously:

The supercomputers housed in the data centres, which can be the size of football pitches, use massive amounts of electricity to ensure they do not overheat. As a result the internet is not very green.

They're simply starting their floating robot brigade in order to be green! Back to your mundane tasks, humans.

[Times UK via Radar]

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.