Apt. 11D

Spreadin' Love

Sullivan has a marvelous chart of the percentage of the Federal budget that goes to earmark spending. Cutting back on earmarks is McCain's proposal for rescuing us from our fiscal spiral. Not so much.

Michael Bérubé announces his return to the blogosphere here, here, and here. Heh. Nothing like a grand entrance.

Somali pirates have  hijacked a Ukrainian freighter loaded with tanks, artillery, grenade launchers and ammunition.

The failure to act yesterday was so monumental stupid that I'm not quite sure what else to say. Want more synonyms for stupidity? You can read Brooks, Herbert, Cowen, ...

Sharon Stone wanted to botox her kid's feet.

And here's John McCain's old house. As if you needed another reason to not vote for him...

House Votes Down the Recovery Bill

The bailout bill didn't happen. I'm stressed. So is Megan. She writes, "Democrats voted for it pretty narrowly -- 140 to 95.  The Republicans shot it down 65 to 133.  I find it hard to believe that they're voting their conscience; they're voting their electoral interest in November. I hope their constituencies enjoy the bank panic."

Question of the Day - Pity Palin?

Question of the Day - Are you starting to feel sorry for Palin?

UPDATE:

“And I do look forward to Thursday night, and debating Senator Joe Biden,’’ said Ms. Palin, whose uneven performance in interviews and unscripted events have sown seeds of doubt in recent days among some conservative commentators who support her.

“I’m looking forward to meeting him, too,’’ she said. “I’ve never met him before, but I’ve been hearing about his Senate speeches since I was in, like, second grade.’’

“I have to admit, though, he’s a great debater, and he looks pretty doggone confident, like he’s sure he’s going to win,...’

The Great Schlep

(via Eszter)

Spreadin' Love

I'm loving Devendra Banhart's Little Boxes.

The first post at Everyday Politics. It's a textbook blog, so please don't comment. It's really supposed to be for students.

New websites that I've been playing with: Quantcast for statistical information about blogs and websites. And Hulu for catching up on House.

Palin and RapeKitGate. I first read about it on the blogs. But now it has made national news. Score one for the blogosphere.

Let's Live Blog the Debate

OK. Here it comes.

I can't tell much of a difference between the two of them on the bail out.

Health care. Yeah, there's no way that we're going to be able to do this after the bail out.

Maverick. Ew. Nobody should call themselves a maverick.

Dan Drezner is live blogging, too.

Obama makes a reference to Biden's foreign policy experience. Perhaps a jab at Miss Alaska.

Obama points out that McCain was wrong about the war in 2003. Stop talking about being right about the surge, please.

Afghanistan. Obama - Poppies. Got to do something about them. Should be there. McCain - Don't want to get tangled up in Afghanistan like the Ruskies. Don't want to tick off the Pakistan. We should be friends with the people there. But the Iraqi people are a different story.

Hmmm. Need a dress for a party next week. Let's check out what's on sale at the Banana.

McCain keeps hammering on the lack of frequent flier miles of Obama. McCain clearly feels that his military cred is a high card in his hand.  "I've been there and had a beer with General Petraeus."

What to do about the baddies in the world? Should we talk with them? McCain says no way. But he has no problem talking with the baddies in China.

Who's winning? McCain just scored points. He clearly feels very confident on foreign policy.

Russia. I looked into Putin's soul and I saw KGB. It was a good line when I first heard it several months ago. Again, again with McCain's travel experience.

Terrorist attack again? McCain - much less likely today. Yeah. Yeah. This is going to be another topic that they are both going to say the same thing. We have to do more - border security, container ships. This is a no brainer response.

Dates for withdrawal in Iraq. This is one major difference between them. Well, isn't Iraq giving us a time table for withdrawal now?

Overall - Really disappointing. Too much agreement. No clear winner. No zingers. McCain probably scored a lot points by name dropping and location dropping. But there were small points. I would have liked to have a better discussion about the two or three real differences. I would have liked a whole lot more on the economy. I thought Obama was a bit shy about attacking McCain, but did a good job of responding to every jab that McCain threw at him.

Does Anyone Care if Wall Street Burns?

I don't think so.

Sure, we bloggers and political nutjobs are pretty sure that we need to do something and something fast. But my students don't seem all that concerned. They are registering slight concern, but their concern levels are higher about than the fact that college tuition might go up a little next year, and they have a paper assignment due next Thursday. Considering the fact that these kids have not invested in the stock market, have never worked on Wall Street, and haven't bought a house that they can't afford, you would think that they would be a little more pissed off that they are going to get stuck paying for this mess.

The really low level of concern and comprehension of this situation among the general public isn't going to force Congress to come up with a solution quickly.

And I Can See Russia From My House!

Watch CBS Videos Online

More great videos and snark at Dan's blog.

Spreadin' Love

Interesting odds and ends that have shown up in my inbox this week:

"Men with egalitarian attitudes about the role of women in society earn significantly less on average than men who hold more traditional views about women's place in the world, according to a study being reported today.

Rick Moran writes about the changes in the blogosphere.

The New York Times has a great new blog, Lesson Plans, which features the stories of teachers. I'm loving the posts by a special education teacher in NYC. Read this and this.

Everybody is talking about this video.

McPeckerHead

(OK, OK. I'm back. I have three hour class on Wednesday and it pretty much kills Tuesday and Wednesday.)

So, I'm catching up on real news. There's nothing like being in a classroom discussing politics, while real politics is happening elsewhere and you can't get to the computer to find out what's going on. When two planes hit the world trade center a few miles away from me, I was totally clueless because I was giving a quiz in an American Politics class at Hunter College. The classroom bubble.

I have to say, as someone with a last name that begins with a Mc, that I frown on all trashing of fine Irish surnames. No more McPalin or McPain or McMoron. No, not here. It's very low, obvious humor.

Though after reading about McCain backing out of the debates on Friday, the only thing that comes to mind is McAsshole.