Bill O'Reilly's head explodes

Paul Krugman wins the Nobel Prize in Economics a year after Al Gore wins the Nobel Peace Prize. This is all mere prelude, however, to Bill's future aneurysm: the first time he has to refer to his arch-nemesis as "Senator" Al Franken.

sustainable living: when it comes to shoes, it's Simple

This was one of my favorite brands of skate shoes when I was young and "like really, really unique, ya know?," but they have since then reinvented themselves as the environmentally friendly shoe par excellence. The "Barneys" in the commercial were my shoe of choice. Sap now has some of the newer sneakers and swears by them.

We should publicize the few good companies we find, right? Plus, I could win a free pair for posting this.

Sarah Palin: still exploiting her children for political gain

She is so disgusting. Sarah Palin got invited to the Flyers' season opener against the Rangers, and came up with a great idea to keep from getting booed to death: she could hide behind her 7-year-old daughter, Piper! From ugh, FOX News:

Sarah Palin has become known as “The Most Famous Hockey Mom in America” for her constant referral to herself on the stump as “just a hockey mom.” This evening, she met that title head on by dropping the first puck of the Philadelphia Flyers hockey season in their opener with the New York Rangers.

A carpet was laid down and Palin, dressed in a beige trench, walked on to the ice joined by her daughters Willow and Piper. The GOP Vice-Presidential nominee said at an earlier fundraiser that she would stop some of the booing from the rowdy Philadelphia fans by putting her seven year old daughter, Piper in a Flyers jersey. She said, “How dare they boo Piper!”

Here's the reaction she got:


FOX News calls that "mixed."

Barack the bullfighter

Does anyone else get the feeling that the "John McCain won't say it to Obama's face" argument coming out of several quarters is a coordinated attack from the Obama campaign? And do any of you get the feeling that they're setting a trap, appealing to McCain's inner belligerent, "honor"-obsessed narcissist to get him to level the Ayers charge on national TV? Do you think this means that they've polled it and found that people would be turned off, especially if countered with a classic Obaman "he's trying to distract us from the real issues" parry, or has the Obama campaign devised a special retort that they're saving for prime time?

Chicago: the cutting edge of public transportation

This is the coolest idea ever. I love Chicago.

Obama vs. Osama

A scary, and very plausible, thought via fivethirtyeight, probably the best polling analysis site on the intarwebs.

Rolling Stone on John McCain

A longie but a goodie. It's a detailed and pretty brutal re-examination of McCain's biography, essentially portraying him as a reckless, ill-tempered carpetbagger with a Napoleonic complex and mild-to-moderate daddy issues.

It's pretty sobering to hear that no fewer than 3 Republican Senators are on the record stating that John McCain's temper is so unstable that it should disqualify him for the presidency. One of them says that the idea of John McCain becoming president "sends a cold chill down my spine." Wow.

to all of you who chose "my friends" as the trigger for your drinking game...

...I hope someone was around to relay your address to the paramedics.

a dream deferred, and thank God for it

One Obama supporter's sign outside last night's debate:

the evolution of John McCain's health care program

Now with Medicare and Medicaid cuts! That'll help people pay for medical costs!

Krugman goes to town on McCain's plan as well, and Atrios calls it "pretty much The Worst Fucking Idea Since Invading Iraq." Hard to disagree.

But the important question is what that one guy Obama served on a charity board with was doing when Obama was in elementary school.

take notice, John Kerry, here's how the master does it

Ouch.

goldfish memories

For the second time this campaign, I'm starting to hear/read an awful lot of people getting complacent that Obama will hammer McCain on election day. This comes right as McCain unveils a massively negative campaign like the one that severely lowered Obama's number a couple of months ago, and the one that lauched Hillary's comeback a couple of months before that.

Supposedly this time we're going to see something different: a strong negative retort from Team Obama along Keating 5 lines. Hopefully this at least shows that Obama and the Democrats have learned an important lesson from '04 and from earlier this year: if the opposition successfully makes the election about you, you lose. The message from here on out should be: John McCain is the wrong guy to fix the economy.

In any case, despite how everything appears at the moment, I for one fully expect this race to tighten as McCain's incessant hammering dampens support for Obama.

"academic freedom"

Conservatives hate Affirmative Action, except when they don't:

All faculty shall be hired, fired, promoted and granted tenure on the basis of their competence and appropriate knowledge in the field of their expertise and, in the humanities, the social sciences, and the arts, with a view toward fostering a plurality of methodologies and perspectives.

Biden fakes out Cokie Roberts

Hilarious. Cokie is easily one of the most vapid commentators in news today. Plus, apparently, she's vain enough to assume that, when the 26 year veteran of the Senate Armed Forces Committee uses a term for Bosnians she's unfamiliar with, it must be because he screwed up and not because he may just know a little more about Bosnia than she does.

the results of the debate: pretty simple, actually

Pundits seem to be having trouble understanding a pretty simple reason for how Sarah Palin could beat expectations and still lose: the expectation was that she would lose so badly that she would humiliate herself. She simply lost convincingly, rather than embarrassingly.

An example from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

In this debate, Biden clearly had a better grasp of the issues. Palin skillfully sidestepped questions she didn’t want to answer from moderator Gwen Ifill and, in so doing, did manage to sidestep that media filter she talked about.

As a voter, I don't care how well she sidesteps questions she can't answer. What concerns me is that she can't answer them, but Biden can.

website shows whether you're registered to vote

What a great idea from the Obama campaign. It will tell you in a couple of seconds whether (and where) you're registered to vote.

Rolls have been purged in a number of places, so it's not a bad idea to check and make sure you're set.

Advice for all future debate moderators

Why even bother coming up with questions? From now now, just turn to each candidate and say: "Governor, 2 minutes. Go."

On a more serious note, did anyone else find Palin's brazen assertion that she would pay little attention to Gwen Ifill's questions at the beginning of the debate, and her consistent follow-through on that assertion, surprisingly disrespectful? I mean, I realize that one of the McCain campaign's tactics (and a baffling one, at that) is to demonize and sneer at "the media," but don't we still expect Republicans to, I dunno, at least pay lip service to the rules?

the Couric interview: yes, there's more. And then, no more.

I have to agree with Josh: it's pretty clear that she has no idea what the right to privacy is as it relates to Roe v. Wade and abortion rights. Not being able to name any Supreme Court she disagrees with is the best part of this clip, of course (really? couldn't even pull out the ol' tried and true Dred Scott decision?), but both of those botches reveal the same ignorance. She just doesn't know anything about American judicial history other than "Roe v. Wade granted a constitutional right to abortion." Once she muffed the second question, there was no point in Couric asking her what she thinks of the decisions that would tell us more about Palin's ideology, like Griswold v. Connecticut or, for that matter, the Hamdi or Hamdan decisions. Palin is so helpless on this topic that it would've looked like Couric was bullying her.

Looking back on the historically awful decision to let Palin go to bat in the majors, the Crazy Train is, ahem, shifting its strategy. From CNN:

SEDONA, Arizona (CNN) – Sarah Palin's interview Tuesday with conservative talker Hugh Hewitt gave the vice presidential candidate a chance to showcase elements of her life story and demonstrate some of the folksiness that's been central to her political success.

It's exactly the kind of interview that voters can expect to see from the governor in the coming weeks, according to a Palin adviser, who recognized that there is hunger in Republican circles and among the public at large to see a less-scripted, more authentic candidate. That means more comfortable settings like conservative talk radio, and fewer opportunities for Palin to stumble, as was the case with a pair of high-profile network interviews with ABC and CBS.

As an email I got today joked, she's a turtle on a fencepost: "You know she didn't get up there by herself, she doesn't belong up there, and she doesn't know what to do while she's up there, and you just wonder what kind of dummy put her up there to begin with".

Conservatives have finally gotten their wish: a candidate who really is just an average Joe, someone they can have a beer with. Be careful what you wish for.

librarians to the rescue!

How did I never hear about this? According to a journal article I just read (Moody, Kim, "Covert Censorship in Libraries: A Discussion Paper," Australian Library Journal 54), Michael Moore's Stupid White Men was originally set to be released on September 11, 2001. Needless to say, the publisher (Harper Collins) asked to postpone the release even though the books had already been printed, and Moore agreed. When Moore contacted them some time later to see when the book would be distributed, Harper Collins demanded they be allowed to redact parts of the book, such as the criticisms of George W. Bush. When he refused, they said they would pulp the books.

Thankfully, the ALA pressured Harper Collins to release the book, which they eventually did.

Sarah Palin reads EVERY NEWS SOURCE IN THE WORLD

This Couric interview is like a goldmine of epic fail. A bottomless abyss of stupid. I keep plumbing the depths, digging down further than I'm comfortable with, only to find... more fail.

If it were a movie, I'm pretty sure it would be Plan 9 from Outer Space: so jaw-droppingly terrible, such a spectacular failure, that watching it first evokes surprise, then derisive laughter, then a feeling of pity and embarrassment for all those involved (Katie herself aside, of course, who will benefit immeasurably from this trainwreck).