So I was intrigued to read about the results of a MilitaryTimes poll about Obama, the writeup of which was full of choice quotations such as this:

“Being that the Marine Corps can be sent anywhere in the world with the snap of his fingers, nobody has confidence in this guy as commander in chief,” said one lance corporal who asked not to be identified.

There is a caveat to the poll results that's buried rather far down:

The responses are not representative of the opinions of the military as a whole. The survey group overall under-represents minorities, women and junior enlisted service members, and over-represents soldiers.

What's left unsaid is that what you're left with are the heart of the professional corps of servicemembers that make our modern military.  As such, these results are somewhat disturbing - is there a point where military members will publicly and vocally disagree with their chain of command as with the Revolt of the Admirals?  What about DADT?  (My fears about DADT are actually a bit overstated - I believe that as older members retire, resign or simply leave the service you'll see a shift in attitudes rather quickly.)  My biggest fear is that the military will reach a critical mass of politicization and will then be forever lost to a whole other segment of the population - one that isn't conservative and Republican - with dire implications for the right (or wrong) leader who happens to either cross that ultra-politicized military or charm them into doing his/her bidding.

That made Sunday's news harder to accept: Humphrey, 18, was fatally shot in the Park Place neighborhood early Sunday morning. Humphrey was found dead at the intersection of 34th Street and Colonial Avenue about 1 a.m. No arrests have been made, and police are investigating the shooting. He is the sixth football player from South Hampton Roads to be injured or killed by gunfire in the past 10 months.

I ride my bike to the gym along Llewellyn and recently stopped doing it at night due to an uptick in violence in Park Place.  It's not a decision I made lightly, since I both enjoy the ride there and subscribe to the "broken windows" theory of neighborhood violence and considered my daily rides a normalizing part of life there.  No discussion of Park Place would be complete without a history of it:

Real estate interests had ordained that the area was marked out for black settlement, and they were already engaged in drying up the white demand by warning white home buyers that the neighborhood was a bad investment, that it was endangered by black invasion, and that, because of schools and other factors, it was unsuitable for white occupancy.30  After it was demonstrated that the houses could not be sold to whites, blacks could buy, and the real estate agents could assist in the orderly withdrawal of the white population. Customarily the withdrawal was spurred on by a barrage of mail and telephone solicitations and personal door-to-door visits, all of which urged white residents to leave at once, "while you still can"--before real estate values collapsed, while buyer demand was high, and before they were left alone in an all-black neighborhood. This had been the pattern in East Ghent, in Park Place, and after the late spring of 1966 on 36th and 37th streets. It could be expected that the same pattern would be repeated in Colonial Place all the way up to the Lafayette River.

This contrasts with Norfolk's recent efforts to revive and gentrify the area, starting with the 35th Street Corridor and then making Park Place fall under the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority and all that implies.  Inroads have been made at the edges of Park Place, with a de facto border of 35th Street forming between the "good area" and the "bad area."  Old, dilapidated houses are razed and new ones built in their place for what amounts to cents on the dollar when compared with similar housing just a few blocks north and east.  That being said, there's still a great amount of crime from 24th-35th street which sometimes spills over into the "good" areas - one just has to look at the breathless CPRV listserv announcements about shifty characters menacing their fair neighborhood (along with the actual announcements of copper thieves) to see that.

Where to from here?  I honestly don't know - I do know that, in the long term, Park Place will continue to gentrify and attract young, adventurous people who are looking for a bargain in their housing.  It's too close to downtown Norfolk, Ghent, NOB, and Ocean View not to continue along the path that downtown Norfolk and Ocean View are blazing as we speak.  It just remains to be seen how long that process will take in this economy.

The debates unnerved both candidates. When he was preparing for them during the Democratic primaries, Obama was recorded saying, "I don't consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, 'You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.' So when Brian Williams is asking me about what's a personal thing that you've done [that's green], and I say, you know, 'Well, I planted a bunch of trees.' And he says, 'I'm talking about personal.' What I'm thinking in my head is, 'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I f---ing changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective'."

from Newsweek

40 hours and counting...

Being an naval aviator on a carrier and claiming you know and understand nuclear energy is like living next to Russia and claiming you have foreign experience.

I suppose we're at the grade-school level of discourse with the McCain campaign now.

Contrast that with the outright pity I feel for my friends across the aisle who, in John McCain, seem to have a guy that would have been great to run in 2000... but is now far past his prime and struggling to keep his head above water.  Witness the extent to which he's staking his campaign on his foreign policy experience - and then witness the extreme and repeated gaffes such as "Iraq-Pakistan border," "Czechoslovakia," and then the latest issue of the timeline of the surge vs. the Anbar Awakening and effects of one upon the other.  The fact that the Iraqi PM explicitly endorsed Obama's stated plan for withdrawal from Iraq vice the muddle that is the McCain plan only serves to further push McCain out to the edges of electability. 

Indeed, it would appear that right now, he only has a few things going for him: fear of an Obama presidency, fear of a Democratic presidency, his reputation from his pre-2000 actions and the fact that the press fawns over him.  At the same time, that just might be enough - get him some decent handlers and gifted speechwriters (along with a LOT of practice at speechifyin') and who knows what situation we'll be looking at in October.