Fear and Loathing

American Prospect's Dana Goldstein says the piece has it all wrong:

"I thought Politico prided itself on objectivity toward the presidential race. Now they are the arbiter of the right and wrong side of an eight-year old debate?"

Actually, it is the arbiter, not they. But we digress.

"These Cuban American voters are traditional Republicans -- it's no great surprise they are skeptical of Obama, just as they would have been of Hillary Clinton. That doesn't necessarily mean that Obama will lose Florida, as the piece suggests. He will be able to make inroads among younger Cuban Americans, who are more progressive."

If McCain wins in November, does his beer-baroness wife create complications? The L.A. Times thinks so:

"Hensley & Co., one of the nation's major beer wholesalers, has brought the family of Cindy McCain wealth, prestige and influence in Phoenix, but it could also create conflicts for her husband, Sen. John McCain, if he is elected president in November. Hensley, founded by Cindy McCain's late father, holds federal and state licenses to distribute beer and lobbies regulatory agencies on alcohol issues that involve public health and safety.

"The company has opposed such groups as Mothers Against Drunk Driving in fighting proposed federal rules requiring alcohol content information on every package of beer, wine and liquor. Its executives, including John McCain's son Andrew, have written at least 10 letters in recent years to the Treasury Department, have contributed tens of thousands of dollars to a beer industry political action committee, and hold a seat on the board of the politically powerful National Beer Wholesalers Assn. . . .

"Cindy McCain holds the title of company chairwoman and controls about 68% of the privately held company stock with her children and the senator's son."

Further evidence that Google is taking over life as we know it, from the NYT:

"In a novel approach, the defense in an obscenity trial in Florida plans to use publicly accessible Google search data to try to persuade jurors that their neighbors have broader interests than they might have thought.

"In the trial of a pornographic Web site operator, the defense plans to show that residents of Pensacola are more likely to use Google to search for terms like 'orgy' than for 'apple pie' or 'watermelon.' The publicly accessible data is vague in that it does not specify how many people are searching for the terms, just their relative popularity over time. But the defense lawyer, Lawrence Walters, is arguing that the evidence is sufficient to demonstrate that interest in the sexual subjects exceeds that of more mainstream topics -- and that by extension, the sexual material distributed by his client is not outside the norm . . .

"The search data he is using is available through a service called Google Trends. It allows users to compare search trends in a given area, showing, for instance, that residents of Pensacola are more likely to search for sexual terms than some more wholesome ones."

For Buzz Machine's Jeff Jarvis, we are our links:

"If you truly want to see the community standards that define obscenity we'll know when we see it, then don't listen to our preaching but to our searching.

"Marketers have always known this. Back when I was at People, we'd test covers of Diane Sawyer in a suit vs. Brooke Shields in a bathing suit and in person, people would say they'd buy the former but on their own, in the newsstand, they, of course, bought the latter. Behavior trumps opinion."

How about Diane Sawyer in a bathing suit vs. Brooke Shields in a suit?

Finally, Slate offers a partial solution to the energy crisis: "Could I Use My Breasts to Recharge My IPod?"

I don't know about that, but if only we could harness the wrist energy of all the people who clicked on the cheesy headline.