Or rather, it’s finally begun.

So now what?

For one thing, there will, to quote a recent movie cliche, be blood.

No matter how lame McCain’s own speeches are, the Right’s many screeching mouthpieces will do all they can to defame the Obama campaign, by any sleazy means necessary.

The next 22 weeks will be brutal.

But they can also be exhilarating.

Let’s get started.

…to settle in for an all-day, most-of-the-night cable viewing marathon. The AP went and spoiled it all by calling it for Obama this morning. Now I don’t know what to do with my day. Perhaps I’ll go hang out at the library and re-read the old bound volumes of The Saturday Evening Post.

…posting online, back in the (mem-O-ries!) daze of dial-up connections, I used to have this “back in my day, Sonny” routine. The premise was that I’d start becoming an old crank while I was still young and could enjoy it.

Well, time, as they say, munches on.

Now, people my age are supposed to be onthe “old” side of the alleged Clinton/Obama “age gap.”

We who “came of age before the Internet age,” according to a comment poster on Paul Krugman’s blog, are supposed to have a whole different mindset than Those Pesky Kids. We’re supposed to go in for understated “quality,” such as that expressed in Sen. Clinton, rather than flashy cleverness, such as that seen in Sen. Obama.

But then again, Sixties Generation smugness grossed me out at least as back as 1979.

I identified with my immediate youngers, not my immediate elders. I fantasized about Kate Pierson, not about Stevie Nicks.

When The Stranger and Nirvana’s Nevermind debuted in the same week of September 1991, I felt that my whole aesthetic worldview had finally achieve true recognition.

Now, I feel my sociopolitical world view is finally achieving true recognition.

To me, Obama is a helluva lot more than a guy with crisp suits and a strong speaking voice.

To me, he embodies what I’ve called “MISCosity.” Assorted different backgrounds, nationalities, and influences. Progressive populism. Optimism.

Yeah, Pres. Obama will likely disappoint me, more than once. Compromise is the nature of politics, after all. But I’d rather have a Prez who promises more than he can deliver, than one who will pretty obviously only work on behalf of the insiders and the too-oft-proven-wrong experts.

As one blogger has noted, the Clinton-era “politics of the possible” reeks too much, by now, of the worst selling-out to power combined with the worst self-aggrandizement. A lot of us want better. And we’re daring/foolish enough to believe we can get better.

‘Seattle Jew’ has some requisite sad yet memorable words about Ted Kennedy.

…we don’t have to do everything the way it’s been done in California? Well, here’s one exception.

…is the new Oregon State men’s basketball coach. This means only one thing: We’re all Beaver Believers now.

…”make or break” primary day of the ought-eight election cycle, it’s still not over. Still.

Behind-the-scenes question #1: Is Clinton still in the race just to fund-raise away some of her campaign’s massive debts?
Behind-the-scenes question #2: Can Clinton maintain her neo-populist brand image if she still tries to win the nomination via back-room schemings?

The City of Seattle might build a new jail on the current Aurora Avenue site of the beloved Puetz Golf driving range.

After last night’s televised debacle (the debacle part being mostly the doing of the televisors), one question remains (out of all the many questions left unasked): Were messers Gibson and Stephanopoulos playing devil’s advocate, or are they really sniveling GOP sycophants?

Saturday just happened to be the first warm day of the year; a perfect setting for the already much-documented Dalai Lama show in the pro football stadium, where he talked about compassion and coexistence for all people.

(No, I see absolutely no cynical irony in that. American football is a game of confrontation, but it’s also a game of cooperation.)

His message, and the other messages at the Seeds of Compassion confab, have been both simple and deep. I’ll probably have more to say about them later this week.

Later that evening, I found myself at the Georgetown Art Attack gallery crawl. Saw some lovely informal paintings at Georgetown Tile curated by my ol’ pal Anne Grgich; then caught some great buys at the Fantagraphics bookstore’s scratch-and-dent sale.

Sunday brought us the last day of the last bowling alley north of the Ship Canal, Ballard’s totally beloved Sunset Lanes.

It was also the day of what just might have been the last pro basketball game in Seattle. Maybe. If we don’t do something about it.

Even after a deliberately thrown season, the finale was sold out. Fans booed the home team’s owner Clay Bennett, and cheered the opposing team’s owner (Mark Cuban of the Dallas Mavericks, who opposes Bennett’s desired team move to Oklahoma City). You saw little to none of this on Fox Sports Net; under terms of its contract with the team, FSN’s announcers said almost nothing about Bennett’s threats or the real importance of Sunday’s game.

Also Sunday evening, and this takes the whole entry full circle, CNN held what it called a “Compassion Forum,” in which Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (appearing separately) discussed their religious and/or spiritual foundations. Of course, because they are rival applicants for a really big job, some pundits just had to compare and contrast who’s really the most faith-based.

• A sad USA Today piece about a Denver-area subdivision increasingly abandoned to foreclosures.
• A black college professor’s fascinating tale of why he founded a university-funded “museum of racist memorabilia.”
• Sara Robinson’s similarly-themed essay in which she bemoans stereotyping and us-vs.-them dehumanization in America, then blames all of it on people who are different from her. No, she doesn’t get the irony.
• A much more optimistic Rolling Stone profile of Sen. Obama’s campaign organization, showing the practical value of including everybody into the “us” group.
• Naomi Klein’s weighty tome Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.Klein painstakingly traces the entirety of the global tragedy that is right-wing power-grabbing (coups, dictatorships, Iraq, even the response to Hurricane Katrina) back to Milton Friedman. You see, before Friedman ran the Federal Reserve Board (where he was credited/blamed for holding puppet strings on the entire U.S. economy), he ran the U. of Chicago’s school of economics, where “Chicago School” pundits and scholars produced long and ponderous statements offering complex reasoned arguments for letting big business do any damned thing it wanted to.

  Klein’s own reasoning is lucid, and her documentation is voluminous. But it’s incomplete.

  Economic theory is only one head of the Hydra-like monster that comprises power and privilege in this world. A more worthwhile look at the evils done in the name of America over the decades would look at the topic with more breadth, even if it meant less depth.

Ex-New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s sudden downfall has engendered infinite rants, jokes, comedy sketches, editorial cartoons, and, oh yeah, blog posts.

A few of the commentators actually talked about the Spitzer case. Some of them, particularly the Wall St. Journal editorial page, postively gloated in the comeuppance of a former prosecutor, who’d risen to fame by aggressively targeting sleazy tactics among stock traders.

Some wingnut bloggers smirked that a Democrat had been “got” in a sting after several Republican sex scandals. (Historically, male politicians of all parties, races, and nationalities have loved them hookers, through pretty much all of recorded history.)

Some progressive bloggers questioned why Spitzer, a fighting Democrat on the rise, was targeted by the highly politicized Bush “Justice” Department.

Some of the Spitzer commentators veer far from the original, simple scandal, digressing into what the writers/artists/comedians would really rather talk about. Among these digressions: wives who stand by their men too much; men with reputations on the line who do compulsive, dumb things.

I also want to digress to a side issue.

With every famous sex-work client who gets caught and pleas for public understanding, an opportunity is lost.

I want one of these guys to stand up forthrightly and announce:

“I’ve been a John. I AM a John. I admit it. No, I proclaim it.I liked it. I may do it again, maybe soon, maybe even today.

These women are fabulous. They deserve our utmost respect and admiration.

If my own darling daughter or beloved son chose this as a temporary or even a permanent career, I’d offer my sincerest support. And so would my dear wife. And so would my dear wife’s gardener/lover, and her driver/lover.

And so should all of you.

That’s why, as one of this state’s top public figures, I introduce a bill today to legalize, tax, and regulate this vital sector of our economy.

Furthermore, this bill will provide full health benefits for these workers, plus a great retirement plan.

And finally, I’m authorizing the state tourism board to launch a new campaign aimed at the clean, upscale sex tourist—especially if he’s paying in stable Euros. ‘Come for the brothels; stay for the restaurants.'”

I’m not in a position to create such legislation, only to advocate it.

And I might never get the opportunity to create such legislation.

Because I may never get elected to public office.

Because I’m admitting to have been a customer of escort services.

I’ve also had close friends who worked for escort services; some as service providers, some as office administrators.

I’d like them to have some more respect from our governments and our society, for the fine work they do and for the fine people they are.

And I’d like the profession’s private customers to become its public supporters.

…some more smokin’-gun evidence of John McCain, erstwhile reformist, taking big bux from Airbus after helping the company get that tanker deal instead of Boeing.

…another 7 daze since I last posted. Excuses: Got none. (Except that a startup entrepreneurial venture I’d been involved with this past year seems to have gone “on hold.”)

In the nooze recently:

• That novelty Hillary Clinton nutcracker I told you about late last year? Somebody used one as the focus of a bomb scare at the Olympia state capitol. Unfunny.
• As you may have heard, the Clinton campaign’s “3 a.m.” TV commercial was assembled from purchased stock footage. The little girl in the footage is now grown up, she lives here in WashState, and, yep, she’s an Obama supporter.
• That most recent, well-funded save-the-Sonics drive heads toward a not-really-that-drastic deadline. While the plan for minimal KeyArena improvements (mostly a food court and new concourses; not that many new seats) would rely on private funding for half its cost, the would-be new owners want the state to chip in $75 million. It’d take some pushing n’ cajoling to get that request thru the Legislature’s current regular session, scheduled to wrap up darn soon. Some Legislative leaders, such as House Speaker Frank Chopp, have built their public images around the idea that they don’t cave in to such big-money demands, at least not right away. But Gov. Gregoire can still call a one-day special session to pass the funding (in my opinion, a reasonable investment for a reasonable reward). The hard part’s still persuading Clay Bennett to sell and persuading league boss David Stern to stop being Bennett’s toady.
• It’s a big night for all lovers of classic Tacoma power pop, as the Ventures get into the R n’ R Hall o’ Fame.
• The Sunday Times/P-I cut its total opinion pages (which, by contract, are alloted 50/50 to each paper) from six pages to four. When the joint Sunday edition launched, 24 and a half years ago, each paper got six pages to express its “editorial voice.”
• Boeing boosters blame McCain for that big Air Force tanker contract going to Airbus. So much for a GOP revival in this state this year.

…a few days since we last met. But here are some recent events in the nooze:

• A plan’s been announced to keep the Sonics, or move in some other NBA team to replace ’em. Yeah, it involves public arena subsidies. But the arena in question would still be our good ol’ KeyArena/Coliseum. And private interests would pick up a huger share of the tab than in any previous scheme. Of course, there’s the li’l matter of convincing current owner Clay Bennett and NBA commissioner David Stern (who hates Seattle even more than the Seattle Times editorial board does).
• No matter how much money the UW raises in its many assorted fundraising/begging programs, it just keeps on making tuition ever-less affordable. Congress doesn’t like it.
• Some self-styled radical environmentalists want to preserve exurban forest lands from sprawl. Their solution: Set fire to an unoccupied cul-de-sac, a fire which, if set at some other time of the year, could conceivably spread and burn said forest land.
• The first televised Mariners game of the pre-season is on local cable at noon today (Monday). I know it’s a game that doesn’t “count,” but hey, neither did the Ms’ last 20 or so games last season.
• Once you start looking into Port o’ Seattle corruption, it can truly become a bottomless pit.
• How to get high school kids interestedin reading newspapers: Run sensational surveys of students’ oral-sex experiences. (Hey, it’s the taste sensation that’s sweeping the nation!)
• Airbus, with a domestic company fronting for it, got the Air Force tanker plane contract Boeing really really wanted. Next stop: litigation.
• Here’s what to do the next time you see a bus with an unconscious driver heading your way.
• Since certain right-wing radio guys have no qualms about using or misusing people’s names in order to make character-assassination implications, let’s compare Vladmir Putin’s handpicked successor/flunky Dimitry Medvedev with the locally based GOP-talk spewer Michael Medved: One is a sniveling, butt-kissing toady to a ruthless, anti-democratic despot with delusions of godhood. And one is the new President of Russia.