The 2012 election is barely over and already people are opining on who will contend for the Presidency in 2016 or who will be the next Mayor in 2014. Who will replace Supervisor George Shirakawa if he resigns? Which brings us to the mental gymnastics some local pundits are making regarding recent changes at the South Bay Labor Council. Is Cindy Chavez running for Mayor? Is she positioning herself for Supervisor?

On the same day the county released a second audit critical of P-Card purchases made by Supervisor George Shirakawa’s office, County Executive Jeff Smith provided his first extended comments regarding Shirakawa’s misuse of taxpayer funds.

Fly isn’t the only one captivated by the professional diaries of Mercury News opinion editor Barbara Marshman. Two weeks after Metro revealed that Marshman made a quid pro quo offer of “lavish praise” to Water District candidate Barbara Keegan in exchange for her removal from the race, a shadow group called Political Record Strategies (PRS) made a request for all electronic communications between city of San Jose officials and Marshman, as well as the rest of the paper’s editorial board.

Earlier this year, a group of former elected officials lent their support to an initiative that would have secured funding for San Jose’s libraries. The initiative, which failed to make it on the ballot, had a number of critics, including one Mercury News editor known for sending ill-advised emails.

The day after a county audit demanded George Shirakawa reimburse $12,772 in improper charges with his county-issued credit card, the president of the Board of Supervisors threw out a checklist of reasons why the media would make up “straight-up untrue” reports about his fraudulent expense reports, misuse of taxpayer money and missing campaign disclosure forms.

A culture war is being waged between some San Jose police officers and Independent Police Auditor LaDoris Cordell. Judge Cordell has taken issue with a T-shirt that was designed for officers in an elite tactical unit that is equipped with assault rifles. Cordell, who called the shirt’s design “a thug logo,” features the acronym SJPD, a human skull with two assault rifles crossed in the background and the motto “Usus Ferocitas,” which in Latin can translate to several meanings.

County Supervisor George Shirakawa issued his first public comments regarding his reported misuse of taxpayer money in an email Wednesday to constituents. In the letter, Shirakawa uses a myth/fact juxtaposition to clear up “a complicated issue that can’t be explained with sensationalized headlines and scandalous printed ‘sound bites.’”

A recent Mercury News editorial called on Supervisor George Shirakawa to resign based on the revelations reported by Josh Koehn in the Metro. Shirakawa’s actions included misappropriating taxpayer money, fraudulent reporting of expenses, misuse of campaign donations and failure to file the appropriate financial documents after repeated warnings. It is right and proper the Mercury News came to its conclusion based on the overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing. Supervisor Shirakawa should resign. But it is a painful conclusion, because I support George’s political agenda.

Supervisor George Shirakawa says he doesn’t want his board colleagues, county staff or the community to be distracted by the “political lynching” taking place in regards to media coverage of his fraudulent expense reports. At its bi-monthly county Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday, Shirakawa tackled the issue head on by saying he would release a formal statement sometime in the future.

STORY OF THE WEEK: The Mercury News provided a brief statement to San Jose Inside regarding an inappropriate email the newspaper’s opinion editor sent to a political candidate. The statement not only reflects on how the paper views its mission, but the state of media in the South Bay.

Jim Unland looked exhausted on election night. But that fatigue didn’t last long after the Mercury News reported over the weekend that an upstart member of the police union named Jon Baker was questioning Unland’s leadership of the Police Officers Association.

Count Barbara Keegan among those most flabbergasted with her landslide victory last week for a seat on the Santa Clara Valley Water District board. But if it were up to the opinion editor at our local daily, Keegan would have pulled out of the race months ago. That would have allowed David Ginsborg, deputy to the county’s tax assessor, to easily claim retiring Joe Judge’s board seat. Barbara Marshman, the Mercury News’ editorial writer and decider of all things good and natural emailed Keegan in early August to try and cajole her into dropping out of the race.

The media has portrayed a polarized country by classifying states as either red or blue. If states were categorized by voting percentages rather than electoral votes, here’s how the United States of America would look. This map was created using Photoshop values based on voting percentages by New York DJ and producer Cousin Cole.

When the media gets the facts in a story wrong, it is a great disservice to the public. Once a false narrative gets into the minds of the public it is very difficult to reverse. The most recent local example is the story regarding campaign signs, Rose Herrera’s husband, a videotape, dueling charges and two separate press conferences.

Many current public polling organizations have mastered the art of the liar poll. These polls are designed to reflect a result, so that voters are deceived into believing that certain candidates or issues are winning, when clearly they are not.

Here comes the plethora of mail, radio, television, emails, blogs, YouTube ads and Facebook posts designed to win over the uninformed, the misinformed, the naive, and the truly rare undecided voter. But these messages are important, believe it or not.