Walz notes, “To be fair, both states are rectangular, nearly identical in size, and stacked next to each other. But we doubt our third grade teachers would buy that!”

On a related topic, in April, the Obama administration – which, as we all know, is committed to transparency – threw a hissy fit over San Francisco Chronicle reporter Carla Marinucci posting video of a private fundraising event she had attended, and is still punishing the paper for its transgression. Press credentials to cover Obama’s fundraising swing were doled out only to national pool and not to the Chronicle or other local newspapers. Noting that “when people are writing checks of up to five figures to curry favor with the administration … “local journalists are much better equipped to identify the contributors who are attending high-priced fetes,” The Chronicle calls bullsh*t on Obama for freezing out the local press: 

When the president comes calling, it's important to know what he says and who's there. But Bay Area reporters were severely restricted in covering President Obama's visit to the rich precincts of the Silicon Valley.

The Obama team, which fancies itself as the "most open administration in history," didn't want local reporters on hand when the president held forth at a $38,500-per-head dinner in Atherton and a second $2,500-and-up gathering in Woodside. Hometown media - that's us - were barred after asking to attend.

The White House can draw the rules as it wants. But it shouldn't expect praise for openness, candor and transparency with moves like this one.

† The Incredible Shrinking Candidate: Former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain leads the Republican field in a new Zogby International poll of “all likely voters and of likely Republican primary voters.” Following Cain, the choice of 28 percent of the respondents, were TX Gov. Rick Perry (18 percent), former MA Gov. Mitt Romney (17 percent) and Ron Paul (11 percent). The outcome of the Zogby survey – which was conducted after the Fox News-Google GOP Presidential debate in Orlando Thursday night but before Saturday’s straw poll proved to be a harbinger of things to come. Human Events warns that “it’s one poll, it might be an outlier, Zogby’s accuracy has been questioned in the past, et cetera” but notes:

[T]hese numbers reflect the general shape of the race pretty well: Perry started big but fizzled fast, Romney’s been playing a careful game built around damage control, Paul’s got a loyal following but can’t reach beyond it.

And a new FOX News poll of 925 registered voters taken after the debate and the straw poll finds that Herman Cain has moved into the top tier. Asked which candidate “you would like to see as the Republican presidential nominee” 23 percent answered Romney, 19 percent said Perry and 17 percent wanted Cain. The difference between those who would choose Perry vs. Cain falls within the survey’s 3 percent margin of error.

While acknowledging that “Herman Cain is on a roll” in a profile about the presidential hopeful (Jack Kemp once described him as “a black guy who stands up with the voice of Othello, the looks of a football player, the English of Oxfordian quality and the courage of a lion”), The Washington Post cautions that because “Cain speaks his mind” he is “unlikely to be nominated for president in 2012” and has “he’s proved somewhat clumsy at running a campaign”:

He’s said that Planned Parenthood was formed to “help kill black babies before they came into the world.” He’s had to clarify statements that communities should have the right to ban mosques and that he would not be comfortable with a Muslim in his cabinet.

He’s a hard-liner on social issues and immigration and supports huge cuts to the federal goverment – policies that might captivate conservative straw-poll voters but won’t lure a wide swath of voters. …

Top aides in Iowa and New Hampshire quit earlier this year, saying Cain wasn’t taking the early states seriously. One former staffer recently provided legal testimony that staff tried to cover up the role of a gay campaign adviser. He refuses to name the economic advisers who helped come up with his plan; in May, Cain said he couldn’t talk about foreign policy until elected.

None of those problems are eliminated with Cain’s straw poll win. But his modest fundraising will probably expand with the unexpected triumph, and when the election is over, the national attention will undoubtedly help his radio career and his book sales. 

RedStateNews tempers the WaPo’s rather pessimistic view of Cain’s chances a bit: 

[FL straw poll voters] voted for Herman Cain because he is not running against Barack Obama so much as he is running for an America he believes in and that other people can get excited about. People love Herman Cain’s optimism. They love his vision. They love his 9-9-9 plan.

The last is key. Herman has an articulated, easy to remember plan for economic recovery in his 9-9-9 plan. Quick! What is Mitt Romney’s plan? Jon Huntsman’s? Rick Perry’s? Michele Bachmann’s? They all, more or less, have them, but they are not readily memorable or easy to understand.

Herman Cain is consistently conservative, he is running for something, not against someone, and he is the most optimistic candidate on stage. …

Herman Cain may or may not win the nomination, but right now he is the center of gravity within the Republican field and all the other candidates are, after last week, being pulled into his orbit.

And that is a very good thing.

† Every Bubble Bursts Eventually (updates this item and this item): Teeny-boppers still think President Barack Hussein Obama is “really cool” but their older siblings have cooled on the cat. So much so that MTV wants nothing to do with Obama’s Get Out the Vote campaign, New York Post reports:

President Obama’s re-election campaign wants to connect with young Americans and reached out recently to MTV for help – but the cable network turned them down, sources tell The Post. …

The campaign called MTV’s internal ad agency, MTV Scratch, for assistance in mid-August, sources familiar with the conversations said. …

“The youth initiative is having trouble with big donors and youth votes,” said a person familiar with the discussions. “They asked, ‘Can you tell us how we should be talking to them?’ ” one source noted.

Viacom’s unit took a few weeks before getting back to the campaign to decline its invitation, saying that it doesn’t do political work.

Get Out The Vote denied any contact with MTV about the 2012 election, and the cable network declined to comment on the information provided to the Post.

† Inner City Pathology Has Become A Cliché (the second item on the page): Compare how too many young black men in the U.S. waste their lives and opportunities to how this disabled 21-year-old college freshman from Zimbabwe is determined to make the most of what he considers his miraculous good fortune to be here in this profile of Energy Maburutse by Frank Bruni of The New York Times (“[t]o meet him is to get a crucial reference point for what we in America call hardship and an example of how profoundly a life can be changed by the right intervention and the right determination”):

Most amazing to him is the electric wheelchair in which he spends his waking hours. It’s nicer by far than any from his past. Because of it and the ramps and automatic doors at Lynn University here, he can move his hunched, twisted body from place to place without constantly asking for help. That, too, is a revelation.

“I can’t stop smiling,” he told me. “I’m free.” …

He didn’t know there was such a thing as a wheelchair until he got one two years later at a school for disabled children where his mother, intent on his education, managed to place him. The school was far from home. Saying goodbye, his mother told him: “Make me proud.”

He was at another such school, King George VI, in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, when my friend Elinor Burkett, an American journalist, happened to meet him in 2006. The school’s band, Liyana, caught her attention and deeply touched her, and she got to know its members, including three disabled boys who played marimba — Energy, Goodwell and Honest.

They confessed a fantasy: college in America. It was like “an ant dreaming of becoming King of the jungle,” Energy wrote in a recent class assignment.

Burkett connected them with the United States Achievers Program, administered by embassies. It helps disadvantaged foreigners apply to, and get scholarships from, American universities. …

He studies hard and frets all the time. He can’t fail, not if he wants to realize his goal of a job as a human rights advocate – maybe with the United Nations, maybe with Unicef.

† Obama Administration’s Tactless Diplomatic Debut: Vladimir Putin, the former and future president of Russia, wants to take that reset button that Hillary Clinton presented to her Russian counterpart and substitute the control key (or the delete key, if he only could), reports The Washington Post:

When Putin, currently Russia’s prime minister, makes the very short trip back to the Kremlin next May from his current digs, he will likely bring a tougher tone to Moscow’s engagement with the Obama administration, and the next administration, and possibly the one after that. …

[I]t is not yet clear whether there will be any substantive change to a U.S.-Russia relationship that has improved significantly since it reached a post-Soviet nadir after the August 2008 war between Russia and Georgia. …

Administration officials argue that the “reset” in relations has produced several diplomatic successes, including the ability to move U.S. troops and materiel to Afghanistan through Russian airspace, Russian support for tougher sanctions against Iran and a nuclear arms treaty signed in Prague in April 2010.

U.S. and Russian negotiators also have made progress on a missile defense agreement, according to Hill, and the United States supports Russian membership in the World Trade Organization. Administration officials said they believe Putin will continue to do business where the interests of the two countries intersect.

† What It's Like To Be Sheriff Joe (updates eighth item on page): After GOP presidential hopefuls Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann came to meet with him in the hopes of winning his endorsement, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio decided to put his star power to use by launching a political action committee to raise money for federal candidates who share his views on immigration enforcement, The Associated Press reports:

Chad Willems, chairman of Arpaio's committee known as JoePAC, said the five-term sheriff wants to play a more active role in congressional and U.S. Senate races across the country. Election law prohibits him from pulling money out of his own re-election account to contribute to those candidates.

"He really wants to step it up in this coming election cycle," Willems said, adding that the PAC will let Arpaio make direct contributions to federal candidates and pay for ads that advocate his views on any given issue. …

Willems said Arpaio's PAC has a goal of raising $1 million and noted that the sheriff's own re-election committee has raised $6 million.

Although Arpaio is not ready to endorse a candidate for 2012, the last time around he picked Romney over Sen. John McCain in AZ's Republican presidential primary.

† AZ Becomes The Epicenter Of Civility (updates last item on page): Perhaps The Stiletto was too hasty in assuming that the worthies running the University of Arizona's National Institute for Civil Discourse let yet another incidence of incivility pass without intervening. It seems that – for reasons no one can quite discern – Bristol Palin’s heckler, Stephen Hanks, has had a profound change of heart about his boorish behavior at the Saddle Ranch bar on the Sunset Strip last week. The Blaze reports that he released this statement through his attorney:

Having had an opportunity to view the camera footage of the incident this past Thursday … I have come to the conclusion that no matter what my feelings are towards Sarah Palin, I should not have expressed them towards her daughter.

I am very passionate about politics, and believe in equality for all Americans. I expressed my feelings in an improper manner in the heat of the moment, and allowed my emotions to get the better of me.

Maybe UA sent Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio over to Hanks’ home to “talk” to him about manners and comportment, and how unmanly it makes you look to pick on a girl half your age.

† Now Is Not The Time To Talk About Race: When transcribing President Barack Hussein Obama’s speech to the Congressional Black Caucus Saturday night The Associated Press printed what he actually said instead of the official text fed into the TelePrompTer – for example “Stop complainin’” vs. “Stop complaining.”

Before you could say “Jackie Robinson,” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes put the question of whether this constituted “racism” on the part of AP to MSNBC Analyst and journalism professor Karen Hunter (she said it was) and to New Republic Contributing Editor and linguist John McWhorter (he disagreed). Here’s the exchange, as reported by Mediaite:

McWhorter responded that the g-less version “is actually the correct one,” and noted that part of the President’s electoral success had been partly due to the fact “that he can switch into that dialect. Can you imagine somebody that wasn’t him trying to get away with the beautiful ‘Yes We Can’ line?”

Hunter interjected, “But it wasn’t the droppin’ of the g’s. I think it’s inherently racist to do something like that,” and told McWhorter, “and I think that, for you to sit here and defend it, as if it’s cool, when you know what they’re doing, to me is almost offensive.”

McWhorter argued that … President Obama’s use of that “Black English package” makes him sound “genuine” and “warm,” and “I wish that he would talk more that way while he’s on the trail this week trying to push the jobs bill.”

Hunter conceded that the President “knew who his audience was,” but for them to do that in a publication, you know what that is, and I don’t think it’s acceptable on any level. I teach a journalism class, and I tell my students to fix people’s grammar, because you don’t want them to sound ignorant. For them to do that, it’s code, and I don’t like it.”

McWhorter opined that this kind of folksiness doesn’t sound ignorant in the present day. “I don’t think that a little bit of leaving off a G is gonna make people think, ‘Well, apparently, he’s some sort of unlettered thug, after all.’”  

For her part, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) thinks Obama “got carried away” and “got off script and got a little bit beside himself.”

AP’s Mark Smith explained his reasons to Mediaite (via e-mail) for reporting the president’ remarks as spoken rather than as written:

Normally, I lean toward the clean-it-up school of quote transcribing – for everyone. But in this case, the President appeared to be making such a point of dropping Gs, and doing so in a rhythmic fashion, that for me to insert them would run clearly counter to his meaning. I believe I was respecting his intent in this. Certainly disrespect was the last thing I intended.

By the way, no one raised the issue of racism when Politico’s Nia-Malika Henderson described the answer Obama gave the cashier at D.C.’s Ben’s Chili Bowl when he was asked if he wanted his change back (third item on page) – or her explanation that his non-standard diction was an example of “dog-whistle politics”:

“Nah, we straight,” Obama replied.

The phrase was so subtle some listeners missed it. The reporter on pool duty quoted Obama as saying, “No, we’re straight.”

[M]any other listeners did not miss it. … there was a clear moment of recognition among many blacks, who got a kick out of their Harvard-educated president sounding, as one commenter wrote on a hip-hop site, “mad cool.”

On matters of racial identity, many observers in the African-American community say he benefits from what's known as “dog-whistle politics.” His language, mannerisms and symbols resonate deeply with his black supporters, even as the references largely sail over the heads of white audiences.

Nor when – to cite a more recent example – Brent Staples described Obama’s strut as being another example of an under-the-radar courtship of his black base in this review of Randall Kennedy’s new book, “The Persistence Of The Color Line”:

The next time you see Barack Obama gliding into a White House press conference, take note of that jazzy walk. It is a dead ringer for the strut that was the bearing of choice among ­inner-city cool guys in the 1960s, when Barry Obama was still a tyke growing up in the exotic precincts of Hawaii and Indonesia. The Obama glide represents his embrace of a black aesthetic that was not his by circumstance of birth. It speaks on an intimate frequency to African-­American men, who have been smiling in recognition and rating it for style ever since he stepped into the national spotlight. President Obama is acutely aware of how to deploy the physical self to excellent effect. If we looked back closely at 2008, we would no doubt notice him amping up the glide for black audiences and dialing it back elsewhere.

Editorial Note: The Stiletto is Old School when it comes to quotes, and transcribes them exactly as they come out of the speaker’s mouth. But when the speaker trails off and restarts a sentence, repeatedly "ums" and "uhs," or rambles, she redacts the full quote – being very careful not to change the meaning, intent or inflections of the speaker – and indicates to the reader that the quote has been edited with the use of ellipses and brackets. Especially with Obama, who likes to affect different personae when addressing different crowds, it is important – and journalistically accurate – to capture his inflections and speech patterns.

† Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times (updates sixth item on this page): Ya gotta hand it to the greeting card industry, which is nothing if not creative – in a relentless sort of way – in finding new occasions for people to purchase its wares. Hallmark has a new sub-category in its “sympathy” line – cards meant to console those who suddenly find themselves separated from employment, are without any means of income and face the daunting task of trying to land an interview at a time when many companies refuse to consider filling a job opening with someone who actually needs a job. Commenting on one such greeting (“Don’t think of it as losing your job. Think of it as a time out between stupid bosses”), Mediaite’s Jon Bershad imagines what would go through the mind of the recipient of such a sentiment:

Bah ha ha ha! Man, if only unemployed people could spend food stamps on Dilbert books, they could really get over not having a job! Bosses are so stupid, am I right? Especially when they fire you and make it so you can’t feed your family and with each day you spend unemployed you get less and less hirable and why do I even need to get out bed today I mean it’s not like anyone expects me anywhere as I have absolutely nowhere to be and I could just die and no one would notice and I still have student loans.

† A Court Of Law, Not Of Justice (updates last item on page): Former Luzerne County judge Michael Conahan was sentenced to 210 months – 17.5 years – in federal prison for his role in the “cash for kids” scandal – nearly 10 years less than the sentence his co-conspirator, former judge Mark Ciavarella was given. Conahan was also ordered to pay $874,167 in restitution and a $20,000 fine, The Legal Intelligencer reports: 

In April 2010, Conahan surprisingly agreed to enter an open-ended plea agreement, in which he pled guilty to accepting more than $2.8 million in kickbacks, along with Ciavarella, from the builder and former co-owner of a private juvenile detention facility.

Before the sentence was handed down, Conahan’s lawyer, Philip Gelso, told U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania Judge Edwin M. Kosik that his client’s “outward expression of confidence” was hiding “insidious feelings of insecurity and inadequacy” which, combined with his having been physically abused by his father as a child and his alcohol abuse, created a “perfect storm” that contributed to his abuse his power. 

† All The News That’s Fart To Print: Pompano Beach (FL) start-up Power Green Energy wants to convert sludge from waste-water treatment plants (AKA poo-poo) into electricity to sell to Florida Power & Light Co., The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports:

"This is the way you can handle something that's a big nasty right now," says Roy Rogers, a consultant for Power Green Energy with IBI Group Inc. "Just think of that. The input is human waste and the output is energy. …

Power Green Energy's initial goal is to produce 4 megawatts of electricity, enough to power a thousand or more homes.

It's not just electricity that will be produced, but high-grade agricultural products that can be used as fertilizer.

The company isn't alone in seeing the energy potential in sewage sludge. Palm Beach and Broward counties have plans to use their sludge to produce energy at their wastewater treatment plants. The electricity won't be sold to FPL, but will be used to reduce electric costs at the plants themselves.

Speaking of outputs, The Stiletto wonders whether scientists will find a way to harness a different source of wind energy for the benefit of humankind.