The Washington Post's David Broder deigns grace us with his presence.

Well, not "us," per se. Broder visited the Philly-area suburbs, where conventional wisdom says Pennsylvania's presidential election contest will be decided. But instead of dwelling amongst the peasantry in Pennsylvania's rural and post-industrial villages, as so many national reporters have done, Broder visits Montgomery County instead. 

Broder's conclusion: "It's hard to see how John McCain can overcome [the] odds in Pennsylvania."

Montco, as pundits are wont to call it, is one of those exurban counties which has attracted increasing numbers of white-collar types. Some of these folks may benefit from a cut in capital-gains taxes, but they're also watching their 401(k)s evaporate. And they tend to believe in things like, you know, science. Broder's article makes clear that if McCain set out to alienate such voters, he couldn't have made a better vice-presidential pick than Sarah Palin.  

One Obama backer laments the fact that Palin "drops her g's constantly" -- which seems about as CELEBRATING the fact that she drops her g's constantly. But even a GOP voter admits that, "The thought of Sarah Palin being a heartbeat away is terrifying."

In any case, the story is worth a read because it offers up anecdotal reasons for why the GOP, after signalling a desire to go after Obama on trumped-up "character issues," now seems to be backing off. That stuff fires up the right, but this year, it's not playing with undecided voters, who are the key to McCain's diminishing hopes. 

Broder introduces us to Lois Coar, who by all rights should be voting for McCain: She tells Broder that she backed GOP candidate Mitt Romney earlier this year, and says she can't see herself voting for Obama "not because he's black, but I just can't put it in words." So why isn't she backing McCain? Because "I can't understand why he keeps talking about this Ayers guy."

This space had doubts about whether McCain's strategy of going negative would work. Now, apparently, McCain has decided they won't. Since playing politics-as-usual hasn't panned out for him, he's going to argue that he's not the sort of candidate who plays politics-as-usual. Since his attempt to cater to the base is hurting him, he'll insist that he's only ever been interested in bipartisanship.

Sincerity: the last refuge of the scoundrel. 

I don't know what else to say about this. Except that no matter who we end up with as president, we're still stuck with shitheads like this as citizens.

It's yet another "race around the world" as the popular travel reality show Amazing Race lifted off from Los Angeles last week.

As always, this show takes a few weeks to get in its grove. At the outset, there are too many contestants to keep track of -- I find the attractive young couples to be the most interchangeable. This season it's the Carolina girls and the divorcees that are tripping me up.

Another drag on the early shows is that too much time is wasted by teams checking in to various tour spots, reading instructions, having the same expericnes on challenges. For instance, despite looking scary, that rope-ladder thingie in episode one created no compelling drama, but we watched team after team climb down it.

Plus, it takes a few episodes for the personalities to emerge, for viewers to find teams they want to root for and against.

At first, I was all for the kooky aging-hippie pair to persevere -- if only to see if they had brought any other clothing that wasn't tie-dyed -- but alas, they fell first. (On this show, the older players either go in the first episode or end up doing very well, perhaps benefiting from maturity.)

Now I'm leaning toward the nerdy, geek comic-book guys. All that game-playing may pay off in some of the more puzzling challenges, and I always like to see brains rewarded over brawn.

Early favorites for the meltdown team look to be Terence and Sarah, a classic co-dependent mess of demanding and accommodating. What about Terence's red-flag hyper-controlling demand of Sarah that she not speak to any other team!? There's already been tears.

Another couple I didn't care for -- Anthony and Stephanie, who were playing to win money to start a family – got eliminated. But not before learning one of those embarrassing, no-duh lessons that Race delivers for some clueless players. In this case, the whiners realized that a lot of people in the world really have a LOT less money than they do. But Anthony pointed out at the elimination stop, "I still have my looks." Doooode.

More than any other reality show I think about being on this one. I absolutely adore the idea of going on a month-long trip to I-don't-know-where. And I'm vicariously game for all the kooky challenges. But the sad truth is -- I'm the sort of person who likes to be at the airport two hours early, so right there, I wouldn't last one episode on this show. Just watching the contestants rush around airports trying to book a flight, or make a connection, gives me hives.

That's why my amazing race never leaves the confines of the couch. But good luck to all the brave teams: your humiliations, trials and emotional outbursts remind plenty of us why silly TV behavior should simply be watched, not done.

When do you know a Pittsburgh boy's really made it big? Obviously, when teen girls are creating weather forecasts for his upcoming shows and posting them on the internet. Julie Bologna, eat yr heart out. Thanks to Chicagoan colleague Jess Hopper for the heads-up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6QjAmFvbV8

It's been 12-plus years since Tony Medwid's first Pittsburgh Record & CD Convention – number 27 comes together this Sunday, October 12, at the Green Tree Radisson (they now occur twice a year; they used to be more frequent). It's the biggest record show in the area, and brings together a lot of major figures in regional and national record collecting – Jerry Weber, of Jerry's in Squirrel Hill, for example, and Gregg Kostelich, of The Cynics. Rock, psyche, soul, jazz – think of this as your record goldmine, and come ready to dig through some crates. It goes from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. and there's no cost to get in. Questions? Call Tony at 412-331-5021.

Two things are clear about how the final weeks of the Presidential campaign will play out: It's going to consist of a whole new line of GOP attacks on Barack Obama, and Pennsylvania voters are going to be in the crossfire. 

As NBC and its political correspondent Chuck Todd have repeatedly said in recent days, "If there is one blue state the McCain campaign may never give up on, it's the Keystone State. Of all the Kerry blue states, it's the most competitive -- even right now at a time that appears to be Obama's high-water mark. Of the remaining blue states in play, Pennsylvania may be the most culturally sensitive and may explain why the McCain folks want to shift the debate a bit to character."

What this means for Pennsylvania is: We're going to see the candidates -- McCain especially -- at their worst. And the world will probably see the worst of Pennsylvania.

Being a swing state, after all, means having the national press descend upon your gritty, hardscrabble communities and point out how some of the people living in them aren't too bright. We've seen this from the Washington Post and other papers in the past (coverage expertly lampooned by the Tube City Almanac). And it's already started again.

Yesterday, NPR sent a correspondent from village to dell, talking to the just-plain-folks out there in the rusting mill towns and backwoods crossroads. One undecided voter said that Obama "scares me. He's got the right answer for everything" -- and he meant this as a criticism.

I'm afraid that if there are too many folks like this one, John McCain may win the state -- he's probably locked up those voters who want the wrong answers from their politicians. And the conventional wisdom here is that rural whites who express misgivings about Obama are racist, and are predisposed to swallow attacks on "character." 

But I'm not giving up yet. For one thing, I went to college in small-town Pennsylvania, a community that could easily be the poster-child for Pennsylvania's blend of post-industrial/rural resentment. And yet the number of interracial relationships in that town was so large that my soc/anth professor -- an African-American woman from big-city Chicago, no less -- pondered conducting a study on it. So while McCain will certainly do better in the rural areas than elsewhere, I won't be surprised if Obama holds his own there. 

Pennsylvania's primary in April offers proof. McCain's surrogates may try to dredge up the film footage of Jeremiah "God damn America" Wright again, for example. But the first time that stuff came up was in the weeks before the Pennsylvania primary contest between Obama and Hillary Clinton.  This was also when Obama's famed remarks about "clinging to guns and religion" surfaced. As I wrote at the time, Pennsylvania was going to be a proving ground to see whether voters could get "past guilt-by-association attacks." And based on the outcome, I think the answer is "yes."

Of course, Clinton won the state, by a little more than 9 percentage points. But bear in mind that polling shows she'd been up by 20 points or more in 2007 and early 2008. In other words, Obama cut her lead in half, even as Pennsylvania Democrats were confronted with the most damaging allegations against him. And Pennsylvanians have seen all this stuff before, thanks to the Clinton campaign (which, by the way, probably did Obama a favor by helping to innoculate them against the attacks this time around). 

Pennsylvania Republicans may weigh these character questions differently on Nov. 4, naturally, just as NBC suggests. But there are two reasons to be optimistic. First, because of the way this election is different from every other one. And second, because of the ways in which it is the same.

What's different, as others have said, is that we're facing an economic crisis unlike any since the end of the Second World War. Even pundits, who as a rule can't tear themselves away from a good juicy attack, say that wedge issues or guilt-by-association tactics don't resonate as well when there are actual, you know, issues to deal with. 

The other reason I don't think McCain's tactics will work is because we've heard them so many times already. Every four years, the GOP trots out this line that the Democratic Presidential candidate hates the country he wants to lead, and strives to weaken it from within. They make this charge whether a Democrat was a "draft dodger" or a decorated veteran. Which means that at some point, the accusation begins to wear kind of thin. 

Don't get me wrong. I've been waiting for the attack ads for months ... I can already imagine the montage of Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, photos of Obama with his hand not over his heart, not wearing a flag pin ... And I'm sure such an ad would titillate the tinfoil-hat brigades. But those people will be voting Republican anyway. An independent voter is going to be less impressed with these attacks, because of all the over-the-top attacks in the past: "Yeah, yeah, Democrats coddle terrorists and want to weaken their nation from within ... what else is new? What else have you got."

I could be wrong. But I'd rather err on the side of overestimating Pennsylvania voters. Especially because John McCain is clearly willing to do the opposite.

I'm a geek, so perhaps it's no surprise that for me, the high point of last night's vice-presidential debate came during an exchange over a highly technical point about the bankruptcy code. But bear with me, because while everyone is crediting Sarah Palin with, I guess, not breaking down onstage, this moment shows just how badly Joe Biden hammered her on actual substance.

The moment came when Biden was talking about a proposed homeowner-friendly change to the bankruptcy code:

Biden: That would keep people in their homes, actually help banks by keeping it from going under. But John McCain, as I understand it -- I'm not sure of this, but I believe John McCain and the governor don't support that.

There are ways to help people [that] are not being supported by -- by the Bush administration nor do I believe by John McCain and Gov. Palin.

Moderator Gwen Ifill: Gov. Palin, is that so?

Palin: That is not so, but because that's just a quick answer, I want to talk about, again, my record on energy versus your ticket's energy ticket, also.

I think that this is important to come back to, with that energy policy plan again that was voted for in '05. When we talk about energy, we have to consider the need to do all that we can to allow this nation to become energy independent. It's a nonsensical position …

It certainly is.

Here's what I think happened there. I think Biden set Palin up by pretending not to know what McCain's position was on a policy issue. And he did this because he knew that Palin didn't know McCain's position on the issue. And he figured there was a good chance for Palin to flub it.

Palin didn't flub it, but only because she simply changed the subject to something she wanted to talk about. This happened over and over again, as every conscious human being watching the debate-- even some of the pundits --  must have noticed. At one point, Palin tried to turn this into a virtue:

I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also.

Which, roughly translated, means, "For all intents and purposes, I'm going to dodge any question I either don't want to answer or am incapable of answering." Here, we see Palin trying to pretend that refusing to answer a question is a form of "straight talk."

None of these tactics are surprising. It's well documented that Palin comes from the Newt Gingrich school of debating: If you don't like the question you're asked, mutter a few words that sound responsive, and then answer a question you like better.

But what was surprising is that most of the pundits I saw on the major networks let her get away with it. In fact, they praised her for refusing to observe the basic principle of any debate, which is that you answer the question put to you. Katie Couric of CBS, for example, credited Palin for being a good debater -- not despite but because Palin sidestepped questions.

Palin clearly benefited from the soft bigotry of diminished expectations, at least as far as the commentariat was concerned. But instant polling by Couric's own network -- as well as by CNN -- showed that by double-digit margins, voters thought Biden won the debate. Most commentators I saw, by contrast, called it a draw, or at best suggested that while Biden's answers were more substantive, Palin "won by not losing."

They were, in other words, given Palin for looking poised, for not getting flustered. Palin essentially said, "I'm not answering your questions. I'm just going to talk about whatever I want." The response from most commenters I saw was "Attagirl!" But if you think about it, that's not just an insult to the moderator; it's an insult to the entire premise of a political debate ... and really, of politics itself.

Of course, Palin tests as more "likeable" than Biden, no doubt due to her folksy one-of-us appeal. (Which I found increasingly grating as the night went on. But then hey, I'm one of those liberal snobs you hear about.) And her performance was poised -- if by "poised" you mean "utterly shameless about simply refusing to engage the issues at hand." But at bottom, her talking-points driven responses made a mockery of the whole idea of a political debate. Just as McCain's selection of her made a mockery of his nostrums about experience.

So, with the debut of CP Remixed coming up in one week -- that's Thu., Oct. 9 at the WYEP Community Broadcast Center -- we're pleased to announce the lineup for the second installment of the quarterly local music showcase, which will take place January 15. The curator for the second installment is local mashup artist Girl Talk, a.k.a. Gregg Gillis. The performers, handpicked by Gillis for the event, are DJ Cutups, a regular at Fuzz!, Lazer Crunk and other electronic nights, multidisciplinary sound/electronics artist Michael Johnsen, percussive duo Italian Ice (Sam Pace of Centipede Eest and Paul Quattrone), and one more performer TBA.

Future curators for the event include the Warhol's Ben Harrison, promoter and frequent CP contributor Manny Theiner.

The indie hype band you either love or love to hate, Vampire Weekend, is in town this Saturday for a free ticketed show at CMU to rally for their favored candidate in this upcoming election thing, Barack Obama.

It's either dubbed a "voter registration concert" or "Barack the 'Burgh" or both, but regardless, the skinny is that these are bands that support the Dem and want you to get registered (before the deadline, October 6) so you can hopefully vote for him. (Why no coverage of McCain rock shows, you ask? Why the bias on the part of the elite rock media? Let's just say until Daddy Yankee comes to town, we'll likely be wanting for benefit concerts for candidate who's actually older than rock'n roll itself.)

Along with the Oxford comma dudes, locals Lohio, Life In Bed, and Dirty Faces are playing the show, so it's likely to be a good time regardless of your political views, or views on Vampire Weekend. You have to get a (free) ticket, either at the event (you'll be encouraged to register if you aren't already, and you're eligible) or at Obama HQ in Oakland (3516 Fifth Ave.) or Downtown (213 Smithfield) between 10 a.m. and 9 p.m. or in front of Doherty Hall at CMU, 9-4.

You'd expect a press release heralding the mayor's plan to improve transparency in city government to be a little more, well, transparent. But the item that popped up in reporters' Tuesday afternoon was anything but:

"Mayor Luke Ravenstahl tomorrow will announce plans to create more transparency in City government," it read.

Transparency is a good thing, obviously -- especially in an administration that requires reporters to call the mayor's office to get permission to speak with the heads of city departments like zoning, planning and public works. the meeting could be about anything. An administration whose authorities have come under fire recently for giving contracts to politically connected high bidders. An administration where an outgoing development official, former Urban Redevelopment Authority head Pat Ford, had leveled accusations about a "culture of deception and corruption" before leaving under a cloud.

And the administration's response to those developments was similar to its response to previous controversies: Create a commission to look into the problem -- while maintaining there really isn't a problem at all -- and give it a l-o-o-o-o-o-n-g time to report back.

On Tuesday the mayor, with Councilor Ricky Burgess by his side, announced the formation of the "Pittsburgh Contracting Best Practices Commission" to focus on the "key themes of transparency, efficiency and opportunity." The commission, Ravesntahl pledged, will work with a third-party consultant to review the city's and authority's current procurement processes, along with the best practices in the private and public sector. Based on those findings, the commission will make recommendations on how to improve the city's procedures.

The new commission which will feature Burgess and fellow councilor Patrick Dowd, along with representatives of local companies like Duquesne Light and U.S. Steel, authority heads and other appointees of the mayor. These luminaries will meet within 30 days and provide recommendations within six months of its first meeting. Additionally, the mayor signed an executive order requiring that all city contracts must be backed up with a "justification form" that would explain "why the contractor was selected." That form will be posted on the city's Web site.

Like most reform initiatives these days, this one comes with some caveats. Ravenstahl noted while he will urge city authorities to use the form, those agencies are "technically independent" and wouldn't necessarily have to do so. Ravenstahl also said that despite the fact that he had just convened a commission to look into how winning contracts are selected, he didn't "believe any selection was done" improperly. But the use of "an independent, reputable third party will ensure that future decisions will follow the best practices."

Fair enough. So what about best practices when it comes to campaign financing? Earlier this year, City Council worked  to pass a campaign finance reform bill that would not only have required donors to disclose whether they or their immediate family members had won any city contracts. Some councilors have long held that there is a "pay to play" component to the awarding of city contracts. Burgess and Dowd voted for the bill, and Dowd told City Paper at the time that he thought campaign-contribution information should be posted online "in a real-time, readily accessible format."

When asked about whether this panel would study those types of disclosures, Ravenstahl said he didn't know if that was something the commission would look into. Members would "define their own scope," he said.

Then again, when Ravenstahl vetoed the campaign finance measure June 9, he pledged to, well, work for "an open and transparent" process over just such questions.

"We must share which donors are doing business with the city to end unfounded suspicions of a pay to play culture… Let us continue to work together on this issue."

When asked by CP Tuesday what he had actually done toward that end, Ravenstahl said he had been working on a plan, but wasn't sure when it would be done. "Hopefully by the end of the year," he said.

(An earlier version of this blogpost wrongly stated that Councilor Dowd voted against campaign finance reform. Sorry, councilor!)