Just some thoughts.

Secretary of State: Richard Holbrooke, former UN Ambassador

Secretart of Defense: Wesley Clark, retired four-star general

National Security Advisor or Director of Homeland Security: John McCain, Senator from Arizona

Attorney General, FBI Director, CIA Director, Energy, Treasury, Commerce: no picks at this time

I’d suggest Colin Powell keep his job as Secretary of State if he hadn’t already said he’d be retiring next year no matter the outcome of the election.

I don’t know enough about the qualifications for Attorney General, so I can only hope whoever gets it makes it his/her first task to remove the Ashcroft curtains.

Salon (remember them?) are reporting that Mr. Bush may have been wearing a wire during the first debate last week. This is backed up by strange, even for him, stops and starts during some of his responses:

On several occasions, the president simply stopped speaking for an uncomfortably long time and stared ahead with an odd expression on his face. Was he listening to someone helping him with his response to a question? Even weirder was the president’s strange outburst. In a peeved rejoinder to Kerry, he said, “As the politics change, his positions change. And that’s not how a commander in chief acts. I, I, uh — Let me finish — The intelligence I looked at was the same intelligence my opponent looked at.” It must be said that Bush pointed toward Lehrer as he declared “Let me finish.” The green warning light was lit, signaling he had 30 seconds to, well, finish.

It’s also worth noting that the agreed-upon debate conditions stated that no cameras were to be placed behind the candidates–a condition that Fox News (of all people!), as the pool video provider, ignored.

I’ll be listening to the debate tonight in the car, so I won’t be able to spot any mystery bulges. But you can bet several million people will be looking.

Does anyone have a copy of this song they’d like to send me? It’s currently running through my head, but I’d prefer to hear the original.

SF Chronicle staff writer Jane Ganahl reports that Al Franken campaigns for the left, bringing his radio show to San Francisco.

Franken is like a tight coil that could spring into the air at any moment. And he’s clearly psyched at the way things are going.

“Air America’s doing great now, after we shot ourselves in the foot pretty seriously right out of the gate,” he says, referring to the network’s initial financial woes. “It’s been a big experiment, but it seems to be working out. In Portland, we’re now beating Rush. We went from 22nd in that market when we started in March, to third.”

Now in 25 markets across the country, the fledgling network will get its chance in the Bay Area, where it has taken over the dial location — 960 AM — previously occupied by KABL, which moves to 92.1. The new call letters for the station? KQKE — “the Quake,” which is not unfitting, given the network’s desire to shake things up.

I hadn’t known until just now that Air America finally secured a Bay Area affiliate. Now I’ll have something to listen to on the way to work in between KCBS traffic reports.

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