On Friday the Obama campaign circulated a report noting that John McCain had called a plan for withdrawing American troops from Iraq in 16 months -- Barack Obama's plan, in other words -- "a pretty good timetable." Another day, another odd move by McCain, who has had, by all accounts, a pretty terrible week.

So then why are the polls so close? Yes, Karl Rove's own firm's polling projects a slight Electoral College edge for Obama; most polls give him a slight edge. But given the gulf between the two campaigns in terms of visibility and positive media coverage, as well as in gaffes, I find myself wondering: Why is this race so tight? Why did this week's Quinnipiac Poll show McCain gaining in the key swing states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado and Michigan? That's the topic of this week's Current video (text continues below):

I live in San Francisco, which is of course Obama country, as is my whole state. So I'm in a bubble. An interesting bubble, though: Although Clinton carried California, the most recent Field Poll found that 81 percent of her supporters say they'll vote for Obama, a much bigger share than in other states. If Obama were closing Clinton voters at the same rate everywhere, he'd have a much more comfortable edge. But I assume Obama's lead will open up as the election gets closer and more people tune in to the election, but I can't know for sure.

There's no better symbol, to me, of the past vs. future nature of this election than McCain's insistence on fighting over whether Obama was wrong to oppose the Iraq troop surge. It's a lost argument before it begins; nobody will ever be able to prove either side is right, and Obama is correct to acknowledge his doubts about the surge in 2007, but mainly duck the debate. While McCain continued to flail about the past all week, Obama was looking forward, and I can't help but think looking forward will carry the day. But I'm aware other people see this differently; the McCain campaign seems to be banking on scaring people out of voting for Obama by trashing his judgment, and scaring people certainly worked for George Bush in 2004.

I'll be leaving my political bubble for New York next week, but that's a (wonderful) bubble of its own. I mention that mainly to note that blogging will be lighter from the road; my apologies in advance. Use the comments section to tell me why you think the race is so close.

The Child Online Protection Act -- the allegedly antiporn measure supported by Attorneys General Janet Reno, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales and Michael Mukasey -- was struck down again this week, when the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals again rejected the Clinton-era measure, which would have imposed civil and criminal penalties on those who put material deemed “harmful to minors” on the Web.

This has truly been the law that wouldn't die. Third Circuit Court Senior Judge Lowell A. Reed Jr. sided with Salon and the ACLU in March 2007 -- after his court had already rejected the law twice, but was forced by the Supreme Court to consider new arguments. And the government appealed Reed's ruling, again. On Tuesday the court recognized that COPA would “chill protected speech” by forcing Internet publishers to create burdensome procedures to ban minors, all of which would reduce traffic and audience. "COPA criminalizes a category of speech -- 'harmful to minors' material -- that is constitutionally protected for adults," the court ruled. "Because COPA is a content-based restriction on protected speech, it is presumptively invalid."

You'd think, given all the nation's pressing problems, that 10 years of litigation would be enough for the government, but another appeal to the Supreme Court is still possible. I was attending a conference the day the decision came down and didn't get to post; I couldn't end the week without acknowledging some good news for freedom of speech and the ACLU's great work on the case.

In other good news for free-speech advocates, today we launched Salon Radio with Glenn Greenwald, featuring conversations between Greenwald and interesting newsmakers, three times a week on Salon. He kicked off with Daniel Ellsberg, and you can find their conversation here.

AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

Spectators with U.S. flags cheer Sen. Barack Obama during his speech at the Victory Column in Berlin Thursday.

I know Republicans are going to try to use the cheering Berlin crowds against him, but Barack Obama made it very hard for them today. At first I was distracted by the echo in the enormous public plaza, and a little concerned about the screaming adulation of the crowd, but eventually I succumbed to the moment. To see the American flags in the crowd, and all those rapt, happy faces, was surprisingly moving to me. Even for American liberals, there must be a psychic toll to watching George W. Bush skulk around foreign capitals, where crowds, if they massed at all, would likely be heckling him.

The best lines of Obama's speech, not surprisingly, echoed the heart of his 2004 Boston convention speech: a call for global unity, after so much division and hatred. Having hailed the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Obama told the crowd: "The greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another. The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down."

And as someone who has occasionally felt uncomfortable with Obama's references to "our time" or to the specialness of his "movement" -- I've never liked "we are the ones we've been waiting for" -- I felt entirely different when he ran down the list of global problems to be solved, and then told the crowd: "People of Berlin -- people of the world -- this is our moment. This is our time." It is indeed all of our time, time to get the hell to work. (The full text of the speech is here.)

There are still political risks for Obama as the ripples from his trip spread in the coming days. GOP campaign ad-makers may find sound bites to clip creatively to make him look bad. (I'm a little worried about them using his meeting French First Lady Carla Bruni.) McCain and his surrogates are trying to trash Obama's parsing on an "undivided Jerusalem" and his willingness to meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or his refusal to admit his position on the surge in Iraq was a mistake. (It's not a mistake at all, it's courageous and consistent, but too many television commentators are giving McCain points on that one, probably out of pity over his awful two weeks.)

But so far, the trip looks like political brilliance. Just as Obama's campaign hit some bumps domestically, with liberals especially criticizing him for opportunistic positions on FISA, campaign finance, gun control and the death penalty, Obama made a high-risk move, taking McCain's challenge to visit not just Iraq but Afghanistan, Israel, the West Bank and Europe. Just as we were about to see the limits of his awesome speechmaking domestically, he found a new, adoring audience for his charisma and talent. I actually don't say that to be critical (though I have criticized Obama's reliance on speechifying); it was a bold, smart move.

It's true that most of Obama's victories on this trip fall into the realm of symbolism and pageantry, but after spending my entire adulthood watching Democrats get trounced with symbolism and pageantry, I'm enjoying it.

The only downside I can see right now is Obama being depicted as enjoying the adulation a little too much. After the speech, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell that he spoke with Obama this morning, and that "he seemed very up, very confident ... He was bragging a little bit about sinking eight out of 10 three-pointers when he was with the troops this week. He even said he felt a little sorry for John McCain this week." Alter is an Obama admirer, and presumably meant the Democratic nominee no harm, but I winced as I listened.

Still, it's hard to blame Obama if he's happy today. While he was speaking to hundreds of thousands of adoring Germans, McCain was in a Columbus, Ohio, neighborhood known as "German Village," talking about the price of groceries. His defenders are trying to make a strength out of that weakness, noting that he's home talking about the bad economy while Obama is jet-setting overseas. But the contrast of McCain's dreary visuals and out-of-touch economic proposals with Obama's grand Berlin event is likely to make people agree with Obama on one other score: It's hard not to feel a little sorry for John McCain this week.

So far, Barack Obama seems to have done everything right on his trip to Afghanistan, Iraq and Jordan. Enormous challenges still loom with his visits to Israel and the West Bank. But to this point the high-risk trip might actually help close the "commander in chief" gap pollsters have found between him and John McCain.

As I watched back-to-back Obama and McCain appearances on television Tuesday morning, it was hard not to feel a little bit sorry for McCain. What was his campaign thinking, scheduling a tiny, hokey town hall meeting in Manchester, N.H., where the GOP nominee spoke against the uninspiring backdrop of a sagging flag, nice elderly folks and a few small kids who can't vote? Meanwhile, Obama looked calm and presidential at the Citadel in Amman, Jordan, a history-rich landscape behind him, flanked by admiring, white-haired Senate colleagues Chuck Hagel and Jack Reed.

Obama is already being baited by McCain and his supporters for saying, respectfully but firmly, that he, not his commanders on the ground, will be the final arbiter of his war strategy. But of course that's his job as president. So far, he has set the right tone of respect for military leaders and troops without cowering or pandering. I had some worries about this trip -- I'm a worrier -- but Obama has done everything he had to do to this point.

Meanwhile, McCain seems to think his best hope for countering the P.R. bounty of Obama's foreign tour this week is to complain about the media. We all know how well that worked for Hillary Clinton. It's particularly silly given the media's longtime soft spot for (and soft coverage of) McCain. McCain's "Obama Love" ad was mildly funny, but most of the clips it used came from primary season, when his opponent was Clinton, not McCain. And while the coverage of Obama's trip has been overwhelmingly positive, I think that's partly because of Obama's relative newness, partly because of the trip's audacity and partly because Obama has performed well so far. As someone who has written before about the media's crush on Obama, I did chuckle at "The Daily Show," which depicts "Obama Love" far more cleverly than McCain did:

Here's the headline on the AP story we ran today, about Barack Obama's fantastic speech to the NAACP: "Obama tells NAACP blacks must take responsibility."

Wow. Obama did say that, and he's said it before. But he gave a long, moving, smart speech that said many other things first, and I thought that was an odd and lazy headline for the story. We automated AP wires, by the way, so we could bring you the news faster, and that's the headline they gave us. But the AP wasn't alone: ABC News headlined its story "Obama to talk tough-love at NAACP, despite Jackson frustrations."

Obama's remarks about "black responsibility" came at the end of the speech. And sure, they were hard-hitting. But for most of his talk, he hit issues of economic and social justice much harder, and outlined the way American society has failed African-Americans.

"What Dr. King and Roy Wilkins understood is that it matters little if you have the right to sit at the front of the bus if you can't afford the bus fare; it matters little if you have the right to sit at the lunch counter if you can't afford the lunch. What they understood is that so long as Americans are denied the decent wages, and good benefits, and fair treatment they deserve, the dream for which so many gave so much will remain out of reach; that to live up to our founding promise of equality for all, we have to make sure that opportunity is open to all Americans.

"That is what I've been fighting to do throughout my over 20 years in public service. That's why I've fought in the Senate to end tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas and give those tax breaks to companies that create good jobs here in America. That's why I brought Democrats and Republicans together in Illinois to put $100 million in tax cuts into the pockets of hardworking families, to expand health care to 150,000 children and parents, and to end the outrage of black women making just 62 cents for every dollar that many of their male coworkers make….

"So I've been working my entire adult life to help build an America where social justice is being served and economic justice is being served; an America where we all have an equal chance to make it if we try. That's the America I believe in. That's the America you’ve been fighting for over the past 99 years. And that’s the America we have to keep marching towards today."

Then Obama moved onto a list of responsibilities "corporate America has" and that "Washington has" -- again, around economic justice, a fair tax code, housing, healthcare, education reform, job training -- the full list of programs liberals and civil rights advocates have always fought for.

Only in the last quarter of the speech did he spend a few paragraphs talking about the responsibilities of individuals and families to improve conditions for African-Americans and for all low-income Americans. And I heard him talking to all of us, not just black people:

"Thurgood Marshall did not argue Brown versus Board of Education so that some of us could stop doing our jobs as parents. And I know that nine little children did not walk through a schoolhouse door in Little Rock so that we could stand by and let our children drop out of school and turn to gangs for the support they are not getting elsewhere. That’s not the freedom they fought so hard to achieve. That's not the America they gave so much to build. That’s not the dream they had for our children.

"That’s why if we’re serious about reclaiming that dream, we have to do more in our own lives, our own families, and our own communities. That starts with providing the guidance our children need, turning off the TV, and putting away the video games; attending those parent-teacher conferences, helping our children with their homework, and setting a good example. It starts with teaching our daughters to never allow images on television to tell them what they are worth; and teaching our sons to treat women with respect, and to realize that responsibility does not end at conception; that what makes them men is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise one. It starts by being good neighbors and good citizens who are willing to volunteer in our communities -- and to help our synagogues and churches and community centers feed the hungry and care for the elderly. We all have to do our part to lift up this country.

"That's where change begins. And that, after all, is the true genius of America -- not that America is, but that America will be; not that we are perfect, but that we can make ourselves more perfect; that brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand, people who love this country can change it. And that's our most enduring responsibility -- the responsibility to future generations. We have to change this country for them. We have to leave them a planet that's cleaner, a nation that's safer, and a world that's more equal and more just."

So many in the media seem invested in perpetuating the story of tension between Obama and Jesse Jackson and other older black leaders, which is much more fun to write about than what to do about urban education. (In fairness to reporters, it may be that's the angle some Obama folks are peddling on the speech.) But I think such coverage distorts a brave and moving address, and Obama and the nation deserve better.

While I was on vacation last week the Washington Post had yet another weak-kneed moment regarding Berkeley Breathed's "Opus." You'll remember the Post and other papers wouldn't print Breathed's original version of two strips having to do with Lola Granola's conversion to Islam? This time the Post rejected the strip altogether, because it featured Opus and Bill the Cat all mooning Dick Cheney and an Exxon guy and an Arab oil sheik, from the top of Steve's plug-in hybrid, as the ultimate act of energy independence. You can see it here, on Salon, where we ran it as usual last week.

To his credit, Washingtonpost.com columnist Gene Weingarten admitted the spiking in his latest WashingtonPost.com chat. "Bad decision. Nothing wrong with that comic," Weingarten said, according to Editor and Publisher. But Post editors "decided that last Sunday's strip was ethnically offensive, overly partisan, and mean-spirited," according to AME/News Planning and Administration Shirley Carswell. Silly.

I also think it's silly that Fox News still won't release the full transcript of Jesse Jackson's remarks about Barack Obama. Everyone's focused on his tasteless comment, "I wanna cut his nuts off/out" -- transcripts disagree on what he said, and, personally, I don't even hear the word "nuts" in the videos I'm seeing. But I want to know exactly how Jackson said Obama "talked down" to black people. In the New York Times and many other publications, reporters referenced Obama's Father's Day speech, which I praised, as the source of Jackson's ire. In Slate, Mickey Kaus says it's Obama's "Li'l Wayne" speech from last week, which Kaus found "condescending," but all the video shows is a puzzling reference to Obama's faith-based programs. I can't believe we've spent several news cycles with talking heads opining authoritatively about what Jackson's remarks mean for Jackson, Obama and the state of black America – and nobody, except maybe Jackson, knows for certain what was said.

Finally, I'm finding myself torn on Obama's lastest trouble, the Bernie Mac Affair (Bernie Mac deserves all caps). I happen to love Bernie Mac. I know, I know, I'm turning in my official feminist credentials tomorrow; I'm a bad, bad girl. I also loved "Kings of Comedy." On the other hand, the "ho" joke he told at the Obama fundraiser was bad – both sexist and also not terribly funny. I'd say the "black first lady" joke was even more offensive, if we're going there, playing on old stereotypes of black women as demanding ballbusters. Blech. If I were Michelle Obama, or Bernie Mac's wife, well, I'd be tempted to threaten a Jesse Jackson. And I have to wonder what Obama's staff was thinking inviting Mac in the first place, since his shtick Friday night was pretty much his standard shtick. He will always offend somebody.

On the third hand, though, if we ever want to elect a black president, and I believe we do (I really do believe that, no jokes here), then we're probably going to have to take a little bit wider cultural view on what's acceptable commentary and even comedy. Odds are a mainstream black presidential candidate is probably going to have at least one of the following: A preacher or a teacher who's said something more radical than a white counterpart might; a family member who's said something angry about white people on at least one occasion; a celebrity supporter who's bound to offend the easily offended; a DVD of the "Kings of Comedy." Since Bernie Mac's humor has a sexist tinge, maybe Obama should counter with a fundraiser by some of the "Queens of Comedy," or unleash my personal queen of comedy, Wanda Sykes, who might make Bernie Mac cry.

Anyway, soldiers are dying in Iraq, the mortgage industry is imploding, banks are closing, our civil liberties were seriously eroded this week (with Obama's support) and we're expected to be outraged by Bernie Mac? I'll pass.