Politics is serious business. But it sometimes makes people say some seriously funny things.

Take yesterday’s article in the Montgomery Advertiser about the matchup between State Rep. Jay Love and Montgomery Mayor Bobby Bright for the 2nd congressional seat.

Retiring U.S. Rep. Terry Everett is a Republican, but given Bright’s conservative views (more on those later), Democratic National Congressional Committee officials believe the 2nd District is ripe for turnover. So the pressure’s on Love to hold serve.

As it turns out, Bright and Love have a bit of a history together. As the Advertiser blared on the jump page yesterday, they both the First Baptist Church of Montgomery!

Oh boy!

What follows is unquestionably one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in print, especially as it relates to political news:

“Everybody will work as hard as they can to make sure the Democrats in Washington don’t get another ally with Bobby Bright,” Love said.

Love said Bright’s first vote in Congress would be for Nancy Pelosi of California as Speaker of the House.

“That is absolutely the wrong kind of leadership,” he said.

Bright said Love knows him and, if he is strong, ethical, and mature, knows better than to try to paint him as a liberal, Nancy Pelosi Democrat.

“Jay knows me. He goes to church with me. I voted for him for the deacon board,” Bright said Wednesday.

They are both deacons at First Baptist Church in Montgomery.

Bright said he hoped Love would not go negative, but added “he already has.”

“I hope he doesn’t stay with that. I would be very disappointed.”

That is hilarious!!!

I wonder if they’ll be politicking at church. Can you imagine those deacon meetings?

Read the rest of the article here. 

Speaking of poor voter turnout, consider the experience of the small Alabama town of Ragland, northeast of Birmingham.

Ragland turned out only 260 of its 1,900 registered voters in the June 3 election.

From the Associated Press:

“It’s atrocious, the apathy that exists in our country today,” said Mayor Gary Daffron. “It (voting) is one of the few luxuries that we still have in a democracy.”

So, the AP says, while the rest of the state prepared for a runoff expected to set a record for low voter turnout, a group of folks in Ragland hatched a plan: Incentives. Lots of them.

Lemonade. Crackers. Hot dogs. A 10 percent discount at a local grocery store.

Even a raffle that promised cash prizes of $50 to $1,000.

It worked.

The group exceeded its goal of 500 votes, finishing just one vote shy of doubling the June turnout.

Five hundred and nineteen votes out of 1,900—that’s 25 percent turnout, nearly six times the state average.

You guys know how I feel about voting. I hate it when people don’t vote. I hate apathy, because that’s what’s gotten us into the situation we’re in with our government.

Not voting: Bad. Voting: Good.

I appreciate the action this group of people took to address the problem. It’s always laudable when folks get together to tackle their issues as a community.

But this story leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

The ability to choose one’s leaders should be its own reward. People shouldn’t have to be bribed to go do their civic duty—especially since so many men and women have gone willingly to sacrifice everything to insure it.

The Montgomery Advertiser had a good editorial about this today.

Turnout among the rest of the state’s registered voters, who didn’t have the lure of freebies, was, to put it bluntly, pathetic ...

Only about 392,000 people voted in the first primary, which was better than in the runoff but still a paltry 15 percent turnout of registered voters. Even that percentage does not take into account the hundreds of thousands of Alabama citizens who are eligible to vote, but who haven’t bothered to register.

So what’s the answer, free hotdogs and raffle tickets for all voters statewide?

We hope not. While it worked in Ragland, there is something demeaning about enticing voters to the polls with freebies. And it is a slippery slope that almost certainly would be abused. For instance, it raises the possibility of one party or the other only offering incentives to get people to turn out in counties with high numbers of their voters. That would skew the results in a general election, and it might well be illegal.

Also, while such tactics may get more voters to the polls, they are not likely to get more knowledgeable voters to turn out. We wonder how many of those voters who were influenced only by freebies actually took time to study the candidates and issues. We’d bet the numbers would be tiny.

To be effective, a representative democracy depends upon the knowledgeable participation of its citizenry in the selection of elected officials. Any time the polls open, there should be more than 5 percent of registered voters present. The turnout Tuesday does not speak well of Alabamians and their commitment to maintaining this nation’s democratic tradition.

Read the rest here.

What do you think? Morally, ethically and legally, how do you feel about incentivizing the vote? Do the ends justify the means?

While Obama’s in the Middle East, maybe he can talk with our troops about this:

Millions of Americans abroad, including about 175,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, face chronic timing and technological problems if they try to vote in this fall’s presidential election.

Troubles that caused low turnout in the past will be compounded by 11 late state-office primaries in September or October, which delays mailing absentee ballots. Efforts to expand electronic voting have slowed because of privacy concerns.

“It’s going to be a harder year for our soldiers and military personnel and others who are overseas,” Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie said.

This week, FedEx Express and the private Overseas Vote Foundation unveiled an alternative that’s speedier — and usually costlier for voters — than the snail-like pace of mailed ballots that has beset Americans abroad.

The delivery service can pick up ballots in 89 countries and return them within one to five days for discounted fees of up to $23.50. The service, run by each FedEx region and offered for free in Australia, New Zealand and 12 Asian countries, includes tracking capabilities and confirmation of receipt.

This is an ongoing problem for Americans overseas:

In 2006, about 6 million Americans abroad, active-duty military members and their families were eligible to vote. Fewer than 1 million ballots were requested and about 330,000 cast or counted, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission — a 5.5% turnout rate.

More than two-thirds of the ballots that were not counted were returned as undeliverable. More than 10% of would-be voters missed the deadline.

(For the sake of comparison, remember that the turnout rate for the runoff in Alabama this week was between 4 and 5 percent.)

And since McCain’s already been there three times since the campaign’s been going on, why isn’t he talking about this?

By now you’ve heard Jesse Jackson’s apology about wanting to cut Barack Obama’s you-know-whats off because “Barack been, um, talking down to black people on this faith based ...”

Jackson made the comment off camera—but into a live microphone—during an appearance on Fox News Channel Sunday.

FNC host Bill O’Reilly had teased earlier this week that the Channel actually had more than it had made public. In his July 10 “Talking Points Memo,” O’Reilly said, “We held back some of Jackson’s comments because they weren’t relevant to public policy. If we were trying to hurt the man or the Democratic Party, we surely would have used those comments ... we didn’t run some trash talk that had nothing to do with policy.”

Wow ... worse than wanting to—well, you know—to the Democratic presidential nominee-to-be—who’s black?

What could those OTHER comments be?

Cue Jackson’s OTHER apology, this one referencing comments he made about Obama’s recent speeches about responsibility in the black community. Jackson said Obama was “telling n------ how to behave,” a FNC spokesman confirmed Wednesday.

This is the same Jesse Jackson who, two years ago, called on everyone everywhere to stop using the N-word because “its roots are rooted in hatred and pain and degradation.”

A lot of luck he had with that.

I have never understood the double standard that exists between black people using the N-word and white people using the N-word.

Sure, I’ve heard all the arguments: Context is everything; it’s only a perjorative when used by a white person; the word is a part of the African-American culture.

But it is the same word.

And isn’t the fact that it’s part of the African-American culture the biggest stumbling block to eradicating the word from general use, as a group in Texas tried to do with a symbolic “funeral” for the word last year?

Of course, we have the First Amendment and freedom of speech in this country, so this entire discussion is about what’s morally or ethically appropriate, not what’s legal.

Certain civil rights activists, like Jackson, do themselves and their cause no favors when they talk about equality on one hand and practice inequality on the other.

And Jackson knows it. Watch him writhe through this almost-unintelligible interview with CNN’s John Roberts earlier this week. Roberts asks about the Sunday comments; Jackson references levee breaches, day-care facilities and foreclosures.

No obfuscation there.

Is Jesse Jackson even relevant anymore? Do we even care what he says (unless he’s uttering a verboten racial slur)?

One writer from the Fredericksburg (Va.) Free Lance-Star says, “Maybe Jesse should cut off his tongue.”

Latoya Peterson, editor of Racialicious.com, says, “If calling an entire group of people the n-word isn’t talking down to blacks, I don’t know what is.”

And as long as we’re talking about Obama’s trip to Europe, read this interesting take on America’s race issues and word-related hubbub from London’s Daily Mail .

So now it’s Friday morning, and I’m still behind ... thanks to a computer failure at 2 a.m. this morning.

I’ll try to catch up over the next few hours.

First off, who among my readers is planning to see—or might have already seen—“The Dark Knight?”

I’m interested in reviews, especially after having read this one from Tom Jarity.

The jury’s out on whether I’ll go see it. Any advice?

This story flew under the radar, what with the hubbub over the New Yorker cover and all, but it was big news. From Fox News:

On Tuesday, Mideast envoy Tony Blair called off what would have been the first visit of a top Western diplomat to Hamas-ruled Gaza, after Israel’s Shin Bet security service received “pinpointed and imminent” intelligence that there was going to be an assassination attempt on his life.

The Shin Bet security service said it had received “information that Palestinians were planning to attack Blair in Gaza, so the relevant services alerted him to the fact.”

They say the information about the attack was “detailed and credible.” Militants planned to attack Blair’s convey with explosives while he was traveling in Gaza.

Blair’s visit Tuesday was to have included a tour of a Gaza waste-water project and meetings with traders and U.N. officials, but not with leaders of Hamas, the Islamic militant group that seized Gaza by force more than a year ago.

Still, Hamas had made security arrangements for Blair, setting up checkpoints in areas he was expected to tour, banning cars from using roads, and lining streets with black-clad policemen carrying AK-47s ...

The Mideast envoy had not been expected to meet officials from Hamas, which is committed to Israel’s destruction and is considered a terrorist group by the U.S., EU and Israel.

So let me get this straight:

Blair was going to Gaza.

Gaza is controlled by Hamas.

Hamas is considered by the EU to be a terrorist group.

Hamas arranged Blair’s security.

(Gee, I can’t foresee any problem with a security arrangement that centers around black-clad policemen lining the streets with their AK-47s.)

And it was Israel’s security service that exposed to plot to kill Blair.

“He looks forward to being able to go to Gaza again in the future and will of course in the meantime continue to work to improve the conditions for the people there,” (Blair spokesman Matthew) Doyle added.

Oh, yeah ... I bet he can’t wait!

Barack Obama is going to Europe.

It’s being treated like the Beatles’ arrival in New York.

Obama will be marinating in a massive mainstream media fishbowl. Included in his entourage will be the anchors of the three network news organizations and dozens of other reporters, writers and photographers for media outlets of all kinds.

Quick: What do you call advertising that candidates get for free?

Come on, everyone together, now: Earned Media!!

From the International Herald-Tribune:

… And while the (three network) anchors are jockeying for interviews with Obama at stops along his route, the regulars on the Obama campaign plane will have new seat mates: star political reporters from the major newspapers and magazines who are flocking to catch Obama’s first overseas trip since becoming the presumptive nominee of his party.

The extraordinary coverage of Obama’s trip reflects how the candidate remains an object of fascination in the news media, a built-in feature of being the first African-American presidential nominee for a major political party and a relative newcomer to the national stage.

But the coverage also feeds into concerns in John McCain’s campaign, and among Republicans in general, that the media is imbalanced in their coverage of the candidates, just as aides to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton felt during the primary season.

Imbalanced? Naaaaah!! The MSM covered McCain’s trips to Iraq, right?

Well, yes ... “in other political news.” Again from the IHT:

Senator John McCain’s trip to Iraq last spring was a low-key affair: With his ordinary retinue of reporters following him abroad, the NBC News anchor Brian Williams reported on his arrival in Baghdad from New York, with just two sentences tacked onto the “in other political news” portion of his newscast.

Poor McCain is left to complain that Obama is politicizing the trip by planning rallies such as the one expected to take place at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate. It’s the equivalent of saying, “Hey, guys! Wait for me! I’m still here!”

SIDEBAR: A word of advice to the McCain camp: If you want to get a message across about your opponent and you hope to use a viral video to do it, it’s probably best that you keep the video under eight minutes. END SIDEBAR

All in all, though, this trip is big news. It’s the first first-hand look Europeans will have at Obama, the first time their press will be able to kick his tires and maybe even test his foreign mettle for themselves.

Sure, you can say it doesn’t really matter what they think, since it isn’t their choice. But if America hopes to retain (regain?) its footing as the world’s last remaining superpower, it has to have a leader worthy of being the leader of the free world—and someone whose leadership abilities have international credibility.

John Dickerson takes a look at the “promise and peril” of the “Obama road show” over at Salon.com:

If it comes off as the campaign hopes, with a steady flow of images of Obama looking thoughtful, diplomatic, and commanding on the world stage, the trip helps Obama address his key weakness, perhaps permanently.

But in risking big, Obama could lose big—through any one of four types of mistakes, as Dickerson explains.

What do you think? Is Obama’s trip justified, or is he being presumptuous? How do you think the Europeans will receive him—and does it matter?

Sorry I’ve been AWOL today. Family in town, my little baby is teething and it’s been a rough day. But there’s a lot going on in the political world. So get ready for a blog sprint: I owe you some posts, so keep hitting your refresh button over the next hour or so!