It's too good to be true: A food truck specializing in Indian food will soon add its assortment of skewered meats and other dishes to the ever-growing ensemble of local mobile-food options. From the Twisted Tandoor Facebook page:

Hi Tucson !! this is to let you all know that our food truck The "Twisted" Tandoor is in the process of being built and outfitted to be released on the streets of Tucson in the middle of November. We are bringing North Indian Grilled meats,Punjabi Fish, Curries , Wraps, Vegan and Gluten free dishes!!

Oh hell yes. More over here.

The New York Times has identified a startling trend within our own, beloved Arizona: the growing power of liberals! I'm just as shocked as you are, readers.

Written by Jeff Biggers, the author of “State Out of the Union: Arizona and the Final Showdown Over the American Dream,” which was excerpted in the Weekly a few weeks ago, the article notes the growing strength of a progressive movement within Arizona, foretold by the ousting of former State Senate President Russell Pearce and carried along by the tight race between US Senate candidates Richard Carmona and Jeff Flake, and Paul Penzone's challenge against Joe Arpaio for Maricopa County Sheriff.

From the New York Times's Campaign Stops blog:

Underscored by Gov. Jan Brewer’s latest act of defiance in denying state benefits to undocumented youth affected by President Obama’s deferral of immigration action against them, the Republican Party’s full embrace of Arizona’s immigration policy at its summer convention drew a clear line in the state’s sand. The “Arizonification” of America continues to frame the national immigration debate. It has cemented the state’s frontline image as so hopelessly wedded to a punitive approach of “attrition through enforcement” at any cost that “The Daily Show” once referred to Arizona as the “meth lab of democracy.”

Not that the headline-grabbing nativists, frontier justice sheriffs, neo-Nazi marchers, gun-toting militiamen and Tea Party political figures don’t exist in Arizona. But as the estimated 5,500 in attendance for Richard Carmona and Bill Clinton reminded the state, the fringe elements dominating the media and Arizona’s state house may have finally met their match. Case in point: An electrified citizens’ campaign has mounted the most serious get-out-the-vote effort against Joe Arpaio, the notorious Maricopa County Sheriff, in his 20-year reign.

The resurgence of this “other Arizona” signals a revival of the state’s century-old legacy of fighting against such anti-immigrant and thinly veiled racism, a movement that began almost as soon as Arizona’s entry as a territory in the mid-19th century. For example, in Tucson, the pioneering Mexican immigrant Estevan Ochoa not only salvaged public education but single-handedly faced down the Confederate occupation of the Old Pueblo. When the Tucson Unified School District dismantled its acclaimed Mexican-American Studies program in Ochoa’s hometown last spring, Latino youth were quick to rekindle his memory.

The post continues by highlighting Arizona's growth as a state that was considered quite progressive in its founding; acknowledging a speech by the state's first governor, George Hunt, which decried the affect of corporations upon democracy; and notes the transformation of Cesar Chavez's "Sí Se Puede" into Barack Obama's "Yes We Can."

For the record, any proclamations that Arizona might actually be heading in a leftward lean in the near future have are closer to pipe dreams than anything else, and Biggers notes as much within the article. But the idea that Arizona might actually grow less extremely right-winged is incredibly promising for the future of intelligent, moderate politics — and hopefully, we'll have less of these running around as a result.

For the rest of the post, head over to NYTimes.com.

A video made by conservative-leaning musician Kid Rock with documented lefty Sean Penn makes it seems like we could all get along if we just traded shirts, shared conversation over beers rather than cocktails and ... yeah, trying to steer the country back to civil discourse is a bit more complicated than that.

Still, the video is entertaining, even if Spicoli is looking a bit haggard.

From the Hollywood Reporter:

The famously liberal Penn zinged Kid Rock by calling him a “seal clubbing, Confederate flag waving, oil whoring, Chick-fil-A eating, water boarding, NASCAR loving, Cayman Islands bank account having, endangered species hunting, war mongering, redneck, toothless, Wall Street Troglodyte."

Kid Rock strikes back, calling Penn a “tofu munching, welfare loving, Prius driving, Obama sucking, tree hugging, whale saving, gay marriage fantasizing, big government voting, PETA chasing, Oprah Winfrey masturbating, flag burning, socialist, ACLU, whiney assed granola-crat.”

But the men’s blind rage blooms into something like respect after an immigrant scolds them for not appreciating America’s freedom. Soon after, news of the U.S. casualties in Afghanistan gives them further pause.

Cue a montage of Kid Rock buying a Prius and attending a gay wedding, and Penn ditching his girlish martini for an American beer and donning a NASCAR shirt.

“The goal of the film is to tear down the one-dimensional political stereotypes portrayed by the media by confronting them head on,” reads the video's YouTube description. “It reminds us that what really matters is that we're all Americans, with diverse thoughts, opinions and stances on issues.”

Kid Rock also plead for political civility in August, during the Republican National Convention.

“I pray that no matter what happens, that this will not divide us as a country, because I believe that no matter what you see on TV, no matter what they tell you on the news channels over and over, all day long,“ he said.

With the Tucson Unified School District governing board race winding down, there is one final candidates forum tonight 7-8:30 pm at St. Johns Church at 12th Avenue and Ajo Way, sponsored by Support TUSD's Small Schools.

Organizers shared that the last forum at El Casino Ballroom was probably the first where voters were finally able to scratch the surface of where candidates stand on community issues. The same is expected tonight.

Tonight's focus is on small school closures and student transportation issues, such as those that took place the beginning of the school year at Pueblo Magnet High School.

This video, from the CD 9 race in Maricopa County, is one of the weirdest campaign ads I've ever seen; it's second only to the wacky "Demon Sheep" from Californian Carly Fiorina's failed 2010 US Senate campaign in abject strangeness.

CD 9 candidate Republican Vernon Parker's campaign went to a strange, LSD-tinged place with this ad, photoshopping his opponent, Kyrsten Sinema, as a dirty, paganistic, anti-American hippie. Check it out below.

The Phoenix New Times has a few things to say about it, of course:

From this ad, we can conclude that his Democratic opponent, Kyrsten Sinema, is running on flower power, she doesn't like war, and toward the end of the ad, it's said that Sinema has "promoted hatred" toward the U.S. of A.

"And perhaps the weirdest of all, Sinema participated in Pagan rituals, singing and spiraling during an anti-war protest," the non-hippie narrator says in the ad.

If you watch cable television in the area, you've probably seen the similar ad from a pro-Parker political-action committee, which is set in outer space.

Like that ad, and most political ads, really, there are a few misleading things about the hippie ad.

When it says Sinema described herself as a "socialist," she actually described herself as a "Prada socialist," which she explained has to do with clothes and accessories, or something like that. Also, it'd be OK if she's "too extreme for central Phoenix," because that's not where her district is.

Arizona politics are great, right?

[NOTE: The headline and story were edited to fix a misspelled name.]

Okay, it may have been a reach to poke fun at Paul Ryan for looking like '90s Fitness Model Kermit the Frog.

But this report from the Washington Post is just plain absurd:

The head of a northeast Ohio charity says that the Romney campaign last week “ramrodded their way” into the group’s Youngstown soup kitchen so that GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan could get his picture taken washing dishes in the dining hall.

Brian J. Antal, president of the Mahoning County St. Vincent De Paul Society, said that he was not contacted by the Romney campaign ahead of the Saturday morning visit by Ryan, who stopped by the soup kitchen after a town hall at Youngstown State University.

“We’re a faith-based organization; we are apolitical because the majority of our funding is from private donations,” Antal said in a phone interview Monday afternoon. “It’s strictly in our bylaws not to do it. They showed up there, and they did not have permission. They got one of the volunteers to open up the doors.”

He added: “The photo-op they did wasn’t even accurate. He did nothing. He just came in here to get his picture taken at the dining hall.”

Ryan had stopped by the soup kitchen for about 15 minutes on his way to the airport after his Saturday morning town hall in Youngstown. By the time he arrived, the food had already been served, the patrons had left, and the hall had been cleaned.

'Atta boy, Ryan.

For those questioning the veracity of Antal and his statement, CBS has proof of Ryan nearly spending more time putting on his apron than washing dishes.

To be fair, his kids looked adorable in those aprons.

Democrat Rich Carmona came out swinging and kept Republican Jeff Flake on the defensive throughout a lot of last night's televised forum in the race to replace the retiring Sen. Jon Kyl. The candidates talked about health care, immigration and those recent TV ads that Flake has been airing about Carmona's alleged temperament problems.

Surprise, surprise. It seems some former Drug Warriors are on the warpath concerning the prospective legalization of marijuana in Colorado, Washington and Oregon.

Former administrators from various Washington drug enforcement agencies (including the nefarious National Institute on Drug Abuse, which keeps cock-blocking clinical trials) gathered on a conference call to try to pressure Attorney General Eric Holder to announce drug law enforcement plans on the three states, according to HuffingtonPost.com.

The call was largely a case of preachers addressing the choir, Mason Tvert, co-director of Colorado's Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, told HuffPost:

The nation wastes billions of taxpayer dollars annually on the failed policy of marijuana prohibition and people like Bill Bennett and John Walters are among the biggest cheerleaders for wasting billions more. The call today should be taken as seriously as an event by former coal industry CEOs opposing legislation curtailing greenhouse gas emissions. They are stuck in a certain mindset and no level of evidence demonstrating the weakness of their position will change their views.

Hopefully, Holder will ignore Bennett, a former director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy under George H.W. Bush who once said the crime rate would go down if we aborted all black babies, and Walters, who ran the same office under George W. Bush.

Congressman Ron Barber and his GOP challenger, Martha McSally, have both released their third-quarter fundraising totals today.

Barber edged out McSally, raising $788,652 to her $479,998. Since Aug. 8, when the campaigns filed pre-primary reports, the money race has been closer, with Barber raising $475,876 and McSally raising $432,966.

Barber had the advantage in cash on hand as of Sept. 30: $549,223 to $298,797.

Here's the release from Team Barber:

Vanity Fair has a huge, seven-page adaptation from a new book by Mark Bowden, which discusses how the plan to assassinate Osama bin Laden came together. Here, we've excerpted a few paragraphs from the story's second part, but we highly encourage you to check out the whole thing — it's a great read, and hell, the work day's not THAT far from being over, right?

Check out "The Hunt For 'Geronimo'" at Vanity Fair:

The C.I.A. men had had a head start. They sketched five different options. That fact alone was telling. [Admiral Bill McRaven] could see at a glance that there was really only one way to do it. The admiral ruled out the bombing option immediately. Whatever the advantages in simplicity and reduced American risk, his educated guess was that it would take upwards of 50,000 pounds of ordnance to destroy a compound of that size and make sure bin Laden, if he was there, did not survive. You had to consider the possibility of tunnels or an underground bunker. That explosive power would kill everyone inside the compound and quite a few people nearby.

A ground raid, on the other hand, posed relatively few problems. His men had been hitting compounds like this daily for years, often a dozen or more a night. This one was unremarkable. It had a three-story residence, a smaller outbuilding, and high stone walls all around it, which merely indicated the right way to go in—from above.

McRaven explained to [Leon Panetta] and [Michael Morell] how special ops would hit the target. The biggest problem was its location in Abbottabad, a “denied” space 150 miles from friendly territory in neighboring Afghanistan, which meant that delivering the force and safely extracting it without triggering a shooting war with Pakistan would be challenging—but doable. It would increase the complexity of the mission, and complexity multiplied the number of things that could go wrong. That aside, attacking the compound and the buildings was old-hat. The tactics McRaven’s teams had developed were built on years of trial and error, missions that had worked and those that hadn’t. Think what one will about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they had produced a new kind of fighting force. McRaven explained what his men would do, and why. He even suggested the right man for the mission: his SEAL Team Six commander, who in 2009 had led the mission that killed three Somalian pirates, rescuing an American freighter-ship captain. McRaven also noted that, no matter how well the operation in Abbottabad was planned, long experience taught that something would go wrong. Something always went wrong, which was why his men’s unrivaled experience would be invaluable.

After listening to McRaven, Panetta and Morell abandoned the idea of a C.I.A. operation. If there was going to be a helicopter raid, McRaven and the SEALs would do it.

[Vanity Fair: "The Hunt for 'Geronimo'"]