Category: Links

A few interesting links for September 14th through September 15th:

• rogerebert.com :: Answer Man – I love Roger Ebert.
  "Q. Yo dude, u missed out on "Disaster Movie," a hardcore laugh-ur-@zz-off movie! Y U not review this movie!? It was funny as #ell! Prolly the funniest movie of the summer! U never review these, wat up wit dat?

  S.J. Stanczak, Chicago

  A. Hey, bro, I wuz buzier than $#i+, @d they never shoed it b4 hand. I peeped in the IMDb and saw it zoomed to #1 as the low$ie$t flic of all time, wit @ lame-@zz UZer Rating of 1.3. U liked it? Wat up wit dat?"

• WSJ’s New Look Is Fresh But Still Not Free | Epicenter from Wired.com – This I didn't know:
  The subscriber-only articles, however, have always readable through a back door for free if you cut and paste the headline and view the story in Google News.
• "You give out too many stars" – Here's why, in my incredibly brief reviews, I hardly ever give a rating. Too difficult to be subjective over time. Really have boiled down my reviews to thumbs up or thumbs down, the binary option. Sometimes I don't include that either, and you have to glean my meaning.

Some additional reading September 14th from 12:15 to 18:31:

• Comparisons: Last Installment – "Continuing (and, mercifully, ending) the comparisons made in my last two posts: McCain's and Obama's co-sponsored legislation in the 109th Congress. Criteria, caveats, etc., are the same as before: no purely ceremonial legislation; no legislation that just calls for a report or expresses the sense of the Senate; no legislation that appropriates less than $40 million, and does nothing else; no legislation of purely local interest. The list is below the fold."
• Think Progress- John McCain’s 43 Flip-Flops – I actually think there are more, but these are pretty well documented. How did McCain ever get a reputation as a "Straight Talker" anyway? Wait, don't answer, because it makes me sick to my stomach thinking about the number of times between now and November that I'll hear about "Bullshit Walker, Straight Talker" McCain. My neighbor said with straight face that McCain voted with Bush only 5% of the time (not 95% of the time). So-called low information voters have been misled for so long, they think they have the facts when the facts are really quite different.

Some additional reading September 13th from 18:38 to 20:53:

• Saturday Night At The Movies Darkness, darkness: My obsession… – Excellent! Adding a bunch of new films to my Netflix queue, stat…
  "This week, I wanted to spotlight a pair of lesser-known, under appreciated and previously hard-to-find films noirs from the 1940s that have finally seen the light of day on DVD. Moontide and Road House are two of the latest reissues in the ongoing Fox Film Noir Series, and both happen to feature the woman of my darkest dreams, Ida Lupino.

  The British-born Lupino (who left us in 1995 at age 81) was a staple of the classic American noir cycle from the early 40s through the late 50s. Although it wasn’t the only movie genre she worked in during her long career, it’s the one she was born to inhabit. She had a sexy, slinky, waif-like appearance that was intriguingly contrapuntal to her husky voice and tough-as-nails countenance"

• McCain's Anti-Family, Anti-Marriage Healthcare Plan – Strollerderby – "McCain's "healthcare plan" appears designed to punish both marriage and childbearing. And no, I don't just mean because it won't actually provide universal coverage or address the market failures of privatized health insurance. I mean even if you do it the courtesy of taking it on its own terms."

Some additional reading September 12th from 16:10 to 22:50:

• The Mahablog » Ike – "Where is all the sincere Republican concern that was displayed over Gustav? Two weeks ago, as the Republican National Convention was about to begin, President Bush flew to Texas so he could be filmed strutting around in an emergency control center, pretending to be doing something.

  Today, Bush stuck to his fundraising schedule."

  In other words, Republican's concern is phony, phony, phony.

• "Media Matters" Privileging the lie – Why it matters if the media fact-checks candidates assertions…just remember Gore vs. Bush
• Experience 101 – Dick Cavett – Opinion – New York Times Blog – "So far I have not seen her confronted with some of the things about which she has been, to put it in that awful Diplomatically Correct phrase, “somewhat less than fully truthful.” (Typesetter: If space is scarce, use “lying.”) As in claiming “no thanks” to the bridge money while failing to disclose that she kept it."
• Blog-Sothoth: The Power of the Internet Tubes – Most excellent:
  "Within a bit under 30 hours of posting my Donors Choose library was fully funded. You guys are awesome. I felt ridiculous but I was crying on my way to Back to School night tonight because I was so happy. How often do we cry from happiness? Not nearly enough. I thought it would take weeks to raise $400. I know teachers who wait forever."
• The Washington Monthly – Palin and the Bush Doctrine – "For that reason, one of the most striking things about Palin's response, to me, was this: in answering Gibson's question, she seemed to think that she was accepting the Bush Doctrine, but what she actually said just restated the old doctrine of preemption. When, as Palin said, "there is legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people", the claim that we have the right to preempt that strike does not require the Bush Doctrine; it just requires the old, and much more widely accepted, doctrine of preemption. That is: in what Palin says here, she's not actually supporting the Bush Doctrine at all. She's just saying what generations of American Presidents and candidates have said: that when a country is actually about to attack us, we don't have to wait for them to actually land a blow before we can strike back."
• James Fallows – The Palin Interview – "What Sarah Palin revealed is that she has not been interested enough in world affairs to become minimally conversant with the issues. Many people in our great land might have difficulty defining the "Bush Doctrine" exactly. But not to recognize the name, as obviously was the case for Palin, indicates not a failure of last-minute cramming but a lack of attention to any foreign-policy discussion whatsoever in the last seven years."

A few interesting links for September 11th through September 12th:

• Media Matters – Inappropriate content? – "Wilson posted a very important clip about Sarah Palin's church and the often radical brand of faith it practices. The clip was picked up all over the blogosphere and as of Thursday had been seen more than 160,000 at YouTube. (Watch the video here.)

  But then the clip was yanked. When Wilson tried to find out why he was told by YouTube it was because of "inappropriate content," which strikes us as very odd"

• Giant ice penis – is climate change to blame? | Metro.co.uk – "If there was any doubt about the terrible threat that global warming poses to humanity, then it can now be dismissed – as this shocking photograph proves that climate change is turning icebergs into giant penises."
• Ebert confirms fellow critic hit him at Toronto Film Festival — chicagotribune.com – This guy must have had too much coffee.
  "Lumenick reportedly was annoyed by being tapped on the shoulder by whomever was sitting behind him, so he got up, turned around and took a swing. Only afterward did Lumenick apparently realize he had hit Ebert, who had simply been trying to silently request Lumenick shift in his seat so as to not to block his view.

  "[Lumenick] hit him so hard everybody could hear it," a source told the Daily News. "Everyone freaked out and turned around."
  …
  his wife, Chaz, who did not witness what happened, was taken aback when she learned of it.

  "Her reaction when she heard: 'I'll get a no-neck guy from the West Side to break his knees,'" he recalled. "Just rhetorical, I trust."

• The First ‘08 Presidential Debate – 1908 that is.
  "William Jennings Bryan and William Howard Taft, both agreed to record cylinders of their speeches for the Edison Talking Machine company. Bryan, Mr. “Cross of Gold” himself, could hardly be restrained from constantly speechifying, while Taft, the middle-brow heir apparent to a two-term president and heartily rustic Easterner (aka Teddy Roosevelt), was more circumspect about squaring off. Although neither specifically debated the other in their series of recordings, owners of phonograph parlors and arcades set up countless faux debates by airing them one after another.
  Now, all 22 cylinders recorded by Taft and Bryan are available"
• Electoral-vote.com: President, Senate, House Updated Daily – "While most of the media attention is focused on candidate misstatements and national polls, there is important stuff going on below the radar. In particular, voter registration. Both sides are doing it, but the Obama campaign is doing it on a scale no party has previously done. According to an article in Time, voter registration is up by over 400,000 in Florida, Michigan, and North Carolina, and up by over 100,000 in 10 other key states. Most of the people being registered are under 35, a key Obama demographic. These huge increases could determine the election in a number of swing states."
• EVStrength.com – "The chart at the left shows the distribution of electoral votes based on statewide polls. The colors represent the gap in the poll. The larger the gap, the darker the color. 270 Electoral votes are needed to win, out of a possible 538 electoral votes."

Some additional reading September 11th from 15:37 to 16:45:

• Download free HD episodes of 'Battlestar Galactica', '30 Rock', and more | The Cheapskate – CNET News – Best thing about the just-released iTunes 8? HD versions of TV shows. To help kick things off, Apple is offering one free HD episode from each of a dozen shows (some of which are actually worth watching!).
• Why aren't women furious about Sarah Palin? | Salon Life – " What her Down syndrome baby and pregnant teenage daughter unequivocally prove, however, is that her most beloved child is the antiabortion platform that ensures her own political ambitions with the conservative right. The throat she's so hot to cut is that of all American women.

  I don't want Sarah Palin being the representative leader and custodian of my rights, my Constitution and my country any more than I want polygamist compound leader Warren Jeffs baby-sitting for my preteen goddaughters."

Some additional reading September 10th from 13:33 to 23:01:

• Palin relied on earmark system she now opposes – Los Angeles Times – " Alaska has been the largest beneficiary of the earmark system through the years and its most senior legislators, including Stevens and Rep. Don Young, also a Republican, were among its most ardent defenders.

  The money that the state of Alaska requested for 2009 includes $25 million for "Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery" and $3.2 million for seal and sea lion biological research, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense."

• TPMMuckraker | Talking Points Memo | So What Did Palin Request in Federal Earmarks? Seal DNA Research! – "Sarah Palin was not quite as conservative as she claims in her requests for earmarks. And here's a great example from just this year.

  According to Alaska's 2009 catalog of earmark requests the state's sea life are in great need of federal money. As Politico points out, Palin's office requested $2 million in federal monies to study crab mating habits; $494,900 for the recreational halibut harvest and $3.2 million for seal genetics research."

  Of course, reporting this means that Obama is sexist, or something ridiculous

• Distractions or what? – As Jon Stewart memorably said, paraphrased, the Corporate Media is like a bunch of 6 year olds playing soccer. Whatever the topic of the moment is, every talking head immediately runs over there, in mass.

  Quoting myself, though with the dreaded link-rot

• Media Matters – Does anybody really know what time it is? – Quote of the Day: "A special thank you to our friends in the liberal media establishment. Who knew they would come through so spectacularly? The ludicrous media feeding frenzy about the Palin family hyped interest in her speech, enabling her to win a huge audience for her smashing success Wednesday night at the convention. Indeed, it even renewed interest in McCain, who seems to have gotten still more viewers for his less smashing — but well-received — presentation the following evening." — Bill Kristol

  Quote of the Day 2: "I admit it. The liberal media were never that powerful, and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures." — Bill Kristol

• Why is lying an acceptable tactic, asset, even, in campaigning for the most important job in the world? – John McCain "would have been better off passing legislation allowing the Federal Trade Commission to fine political campaigns for purveying obvious falsehoods in their advertisements. I'm not talking about claims over which there can be a reasoned dispute. I mean claims that are just obvious lies, about which all reasonable persons would agree as to their plain falsehood.

  After all, food and drug companies are not allowed to make false claims on the public airwaves. Isn't who is president potentially as vital a question for your health as whether Kevin Trudeau can lie to you in his infomercials?

  The president of the United States can still start a nuclear war with an ill-considered policy, leaving tens of millions of people dead and threatening all life on earth with a nuclear winter.

  That doesn't deserve the slightest due diligence from our regulatory agencies?"

• New books in 33.3 series – B12 Solipsism – So when *are* these books coming out? Seems slower than anticipated.
• Better Than Teapot Dome! – "The Bush scandals are out there in plain view, and yet people don't see them.

  Yes, this has got the Harding Administration beat all to hell. The Bushies don't even have to hide their scandals in closets."
  Amazing, really. And John McCain would add four more years to this legacy.

• PALIN FAMILY SHOCKERS: WHAT SARAH'S REALLY HIDING! – Celebrity News | Gossip – National Enquirer – Ahh, family values:
  "The ENQUIRER has learned exclusively that Sarah's oldest son, Track, was addicted to the power drug OxyContin for nearly the past two years, snorting it, eating it, smoking it and even injecting it. And as Track, 19, heads to Iraq as part of the U.S. armed forces, Sarah and her husband Todd were powerless to stop his wild antics, detailed in the new issue of The ENQUIRER, which goes on sale today.

  THE ENQUIRER also has exclusive details about Track's use of other drugs, including cocaine, and his involvement in a notorious local vandalism incident."

  Again, would I care about a non-hypocrite family that had these problems? Nope, would be private. However, Palin is a social conservative, and wants to jail drug offenders. Just not her own kids, only others kids.

• What Are You Doing Here? – "what is all this campaign journalism for? A few news organizations still maintain large bureaux in Baghdad. They do this, it seems, to inform people about events in Iraq. But if lying works as a campaign strategy, rather than backfiring and getting the liar branded as an untrustworthy character, then what’s the campaign journalism for? …. But what’s the campaign press doing? It seems to me that if the practitioners of campaign journalism can’t figure out a way to make it so that lying is punished, rather than amplified and rewarded, by the press then they ought to pack up their bags and go do something else. Pretty much all the other branches of the press — from the film critics to the foreign correspondents to the weathermen to the investigative reporters to the “news of the weird” guys — seem to have a clear role in the ecology."
  Amen brother, amen!
• Balloon Juice – IOUSA – "The total national debt, as I write this, is $9,679,000,000,000.00 (nine and a half trillion).

  The Budget for 2008 is close to $3,000,000,000,000.00 (three trillion).

  Our budget deficit for this year is going to range in between $400-500,000,000,000.00 (four hundred to five hundred billion, give or take a few billion).

  The total value of wasteful earmarks in 2008 (according to CAGW) will be approximately $18,000,000,000.00 (eighteen billion).

  In other words, when McCain talks about earmarks, he is talking about 3% of our annual budget deficit, .6% of our annual budget, and a number too small to even report when discussing our national debt. Or, put another way, he is talking about two months in Iraq, something he wants to keep going indefinitely.

  Not only are they lying about Palin’s involvements with earmarks, they are just not being serious about the horrible economic problems we face. These are not serious people."

• pandagon.net – drop it like a sock – Shorter Lisa Schiffren – "If Obama read from Palin’s autobiography, with no comment whatsoever, the right would accuse him of character assassination."
• Nikon AF-Nikkor 50mm F1.4D Lens Review: 1. Introduction: Digital Photography Review – I use mine a lot, especially late at night when I don't want to use a flash
  "The AF-Nikkor 50mm 1:1.4D is Nikon's current version of their fast 'standard' prime lens, and while this specific model was introduced in 1995, the basic optical design dates back to the manual focus 50mm 1:1.4 AI of 1977. It features a traditional layout of 7 elements in 6 groups utilizing spherical surfaces only, which Nikon claims will deliver distortion-free images with superb resolution and colour accuracy, plus high contrast even at maximum aperture. The 50mm focal length classes it as a 'standard' lens on the FX format, with none of the 'perspective distortion' characteristic of wideangle or telephoto lenses, whilst on the vastly more popular and widespread DX format it behaves like a short telephoto, ideal for portraiture."
• infinite-sushi.com – Passing the torch – "After 6 years of developing, maintaining and improving ecto, I felt it was time to move on. From now on, the new owner of ecto will be illumineX, inc. Instead of one guy working on your favorite blog client part-time, you'll now have a team of developers working on ecto full time. Before I decided to sell ecto, I had a long correspondence with Gary Longsine, the CEO of illumineX. I wanted to make sure it will continue to be in good hands. I found Gary to be a great guy and he convinced me that his team has many new ideas that will keep ecto growing in functionality and power."

  I hope so, ecto has been constantly running on my Macs since what seems like forever (when I used Blogger, when I used TypePad, when I used MovableType, and now, when I use WordPress). Adriaan has always been most helpful whenever troubles occur.

A few interesting links for September 9th through September 10th:

• Creative Commons – My photos are licensed (mostly) under the following restrictions, is it really so hard to link to my when using my photos?
  "Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
  Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.
  For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. The best way to do this is with a link to this web page"
• Plastic Bag Ban in Westport Connecticut – more plastic bag bans, this time in Westport Connecticut.
  (plus this post used my photo)
• Obama is RESTful » Idol Hands: Days in the Life of an Alpha Geek – "I spent some time this morning examining the technology policies of Barack Obama and John McCain. Policies aside, I was immediately struck by the differences between their web sites. So what do the two sites say about the candidates?

  Two Different Platforms
  The candidates’ platforms could not be more different: JohnMcCain(.com) relies on corporate backing for his web site, which runs on Microsoft Internet Information Server and uses ASP. Barack Obama, in contrast, relies on widespread contributions from the community, in the form of open-source web technologies (PHP and Apache)."

Some additional reading September 6th from 17:26 to 21:05:

• Why they won't let Sarah Palin talk to us – Disarranging Mine – "Anyway, I think I know the real reason they don't want Sarah Palin talking to the press. It's their design that if she's not sitting in front of a camera giving spontaneous, unprepared answers to a reporter's questions for the whole world to hear, we, the voters, just won't focus on the issues. Out of sight, out of mind. And with issues out of the public discussion, it'll come down to personalities. And while everyone says they don't want an election based on personalities, I believe the McCain/Palin campaign really does. I think they think they've got a winner with her personality."

  Elections shouldn't have (much) to do with personality, but the McCain team is implying that's all they've got.

• Restaurant Rapid City SD South Dakota + Fine Dining – City Guide – Hmm, at least I see some craft beers at one of these places

Some additional reading September 6th from 00:14 to 14:20:

• Gapers Block: A/C, Art + Culture = Cool – My photo of Mary Broggers Haymarket Riot Memorial featured at Gapers Block A/C yesterday…
• A tangled Web at the RNC – Clicked – msnbc.com – I can name one piece of legislation Obama's had a hand in and, at least on the Internet, it is part of a relatively famous story. What's more, it actually came up last night at the Republican National Convention, apparently completely unnoticed in the glare of Palin's performance: The Coburn-Obama Transparency Bill a.k.a. The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006.

  Carly Fiorina, former Hewlett-Packard chairwoman and vociferous McCain advocate mentioned this in her address to the convention: "In his first year in office, he [McCain] will subject every government agency to a top to bottom review and post the results on the Internet for all Americans to see."

Some additional reading September 5th from 11:41 to 22:26:

• Bill Moyers Journal . ANDREW BACEVICH – "Ronald Reagan as the "modern prophet of profligacy. The politician who gave moral sanction to the empire of consumption."
  and
  "There is nothing in the preamble to the Constitution which defines the purpose of the United States of America as remaking the world in our image, which I view as a fool's errand. There is nothing in the preamble of the Constitution that ever imagined that we would embark upon an effort, as President Bush has defined it, to transform the Greater Middle East. This region of the world that incorporates something in order of 1.4 billion people."
• Talking Points Memo | Green Lawn Mystery Solved! – "one of the tech geeks charged with setting up the audio/visual bells and whistles for the evening was tasked with getting pictures of Walter Reed Army Medical Center but goofed and got this instead. At first I thought, No, that's ridiculous. This is a major political party with big time professionals putting this together. Nothing is left to chance. I mean, is this the RNC or a scene out Spinal Tap or Waiting for Guffman? I still have a bit of a hard time believing they're quite that incompetent. But when you figure in what appears to be the utter lack of any logic for this school being behind McCain and the fact that it has 'Walter Reed' in its name, I'm really not sure you can discount this possibility."

A few interesting links for September 4th through September 5th:

• Austinist: Las Manitas Closed Forever – That's a real shame, I've eaten at this place hundreds of times.
• Thursday Night Convention Speeches Live Blog – " What does this line mean?: "I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's." Did he really not love his country before that? Sure sounds that way. Most Americans I know love their country. A lot. Even without being a prisoner in someone else's."
• No Shame – "One of the most enduring taboos in American politics, the airing of graphic images from the September 11 attacks in a partisan context, died today. It was nearly seven years old.
  The informal prohibition, which had been occasionally threatened by political ads in recent years, was pronounced dead at approximately 7:40 CST, when a video aired before delegates at the Republican National Convention included slow-motion footage of a plane striking the World Trade Center, the towers' subsequent collapse, and smoke emerging from the Pentagon.

  The September 11 precedent was one of the few surviving campaign-season taboos. It is survived by direct comparisons of one's opponents to Hitler."
  yes, and they cheered 9-11, keep it classy, RNC

• Brendan Calling » Blog Archive » Thin-Skinned at McCain HQ – transcript of a hilarious phone call to McCain HQ
  "And I went down the list I posted here and here going through the achievements of giants like Franklin and Paine and the medals doled out by pipsqueaks like George H.W. and George W.

  “I think it’s pretty clear that our country was founded by community organizers,” I said, “and Mrs. Palin denigrates their memory and their patriotism by saying things like ‘community organizers have no real responsibilities.’ That’s bad enough, but even worse she’s disrespecting both a sitting president and his father. So why should I vote for someone like that, who looks down on the things my neighbors and I do for out community?"

• Can The Dems Throw A Hissy Fit by dday… – "Let's see if the media will react to a Democratic hissy fit. Because there's ample opportunity. Roland Martin laid this out immediately. Community organizers, which were part of George H.W. Bush's thousand points of light, provide comfort, help save jobs, create opportunity. In a nation ripped asunder by right-wing policies, they are often the last line of defense. Leaders of this nation like Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, Susan B. Anthony, even Thomas Paine and Sam Adams, were community organizers. …Jesus was a community organizer and Pilate was a governor.

  In the largely white confines of the Republican National Convention, the phrase is a slur, like "ghetto hustler," but lots and lots of people today derive great benefit from community groups, including church groups, and the help they provide ordinary people. …Think bake sale."

• The professionals speak about the OKC Thunder logo – Clay Bennett is an ignoramus as well as a liar. Horrible graphic design, horrible name. I hope the team flounders for twenty years, never once making the playoffs. Oklahoma City Thunder? Lame.
• Joe Biden says Barack Obama might pursue criminal charges against Bush administration if elected | – ""If there has been a basis upon which you can pursue someone for a criminal violation, they will be pursued – not out of vengeance, not out of retribution, out of the need to preserve the notion that no one, no attorney general, no president — no one is above the law."

  Obama sounded a similar note in April, vowing that if elected, he would ask his attorney general to initiate a prompt review of Bush-era actions to distinguish between possible "genuine crimes" and "really bad policies".

• Rudy 9-11 is a Megalomaniac – "Confirmed: Rudy ran way long in his convention speech, forcing planners to nix a planned soft-focus bio video of Palin that was set to run before she spoke.

  You can view the Palin vid here."
  But I don't know why you'd want to, unless you are a masochist.

• TheHill.com – Westmoreland calls Obama ‘uppity' – "Georgia Republican Rep. Lynn Westmoreland used the racially-tinged term "uppity" to describe Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama Thursday.

  Westmoreland was discussing vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's speech with reporters outside the House chamber and was asked to compare her with Michelle Obama.

  "Just from what little I’ve seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they're a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they're uppity," Westmoreland said.

  Asked to clarify that he used the word “uppity,” Westmoreland said, “Uppity, yeah.”

• Sarah Palin Bush Cheney Rove’s speech last night – "The talking heads on my tv are telling me Sarah Palin was very funny last night, and I have to agree. The funniest line in Palin’s speech was when she said something like “Let me tell you exactly what the mayor of a small town does,” and then she didn’t."
• Romney Gore Jet – Mittens is a liar:
  "ThinkProgress contacted Gore spokesperson Kalee Kreider, who replied, “Gore doesn’t own a jet.”
• Media Matters – The sun ain't gonna shine anymore … – "Speaking of imputing non-existent feelings on liberal voters, Ron Fournier's bureau pushed this story out on Tuesday:

  Many liberals are belittling the choice [of Sarah Palin], suggesting that as a mother of five children — including an infant with Down syndrome — she has neither the time nor the experience to become vice president.

  Atrios challenged the reporter, Tom Raum, to name one liberal who suggested any such thing. So far as I'm aware, Raum has not. But MoveOn has started another campaign based on that story as well. Have a look."

• Media Matters – ABC, CBS aired no analysis from Dems during Day 2 of RNC coverage, despite airing analysis by Republicans during Day 2 of DNC coverage – Librul Media, my arse.
  "Neither ABC nor CBS aired analysis from Democrats, Democratic strategists, or progressive media figures during their live coverage of the second day of the Republican National Convention on September 2 (the first day of the networks' live coverage of the convention). By contrast, both networks aired analysis from Republicans and conservatives, as well as from Democrats and progressives, during coverage of the second day of the Democratic National Convention on August 26."

Some additional reading September 3rd from 22:16 to 23:02:

• That’s it – They are trying to lose – "You know what’s fun? Googling ”McCain doesn’t know”. I first picked up that this was a tactic when McCain claimed he didn’t know if condoms could prevent the transmission of HIV. At what point, I realized that if you asked him, “Will this apple I’m holding fall to the ground should I let it go?”, he might plead ignorance while wondering to himself, “Fuck, are the fundies now denying the theory of gravity? Is that why I’m getting this question?”
• Keep Streaming Videos, the Tubes Are Fine: Report Finds – "Pay no attention to rumors that the internet is getting full: the internet can eat 50 eggs.

  In fact, over the last 12 months, international net bandwidth in backbone grew 62 percent, while internet traffic grew only 53 percent and filled only 43 percent of the tubes' capacity at peak times, according to a new report released by bandwidth-monitoring firm TeleGeography."

Some additional reading September 3rd from 19:21 to 19:26:

• Media Matters – Gimme that old-time religion … – "reading between the lines, didn't Lieberman address the Republican convention — shortly after the sitting Republican president — and call the Republican Party a bunch of corrupt, cheating, tax-wasting do-nothings? That seems awful juicy to me. Reporters should ask other Republicans if they agree with Lieberman, and if not, if they still want him by McCain's side this fall. They should also ask Lieberman to expand those critiques, and why, if he believes them, he is still supporting the Republican presidential ticket in November. (Also, by "taken on," he means what exactly?)"
• Salon Newsreal | A joke too bad to print? – "Though no tape of McCain's quip has yet emerged, this is what he reportedly said:

  "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?
  Because her father is Janet Reno."
  The joke may be crude, but it pales in comparison with the published details surrounding the presidential sex scandal. McCain's two-liner conveys some interesting insights into what he considers humorous (lesbianism, a young woman's physical appearance), particularly since it was delivered to a Republican crowd. Remember, this is the party that champions pro-family values."

  Keep it classy, John McCain. Of course that was the old, maverick McCain, and he would never say such a thing now without approval of Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh.

Some additional reading September 2nd from 08:15 to 13:29:

• Just wondering Bob Casey = Joe Lieberman – "After 16 years of the media falsely reporting that then-Pennsylvania Governor Bob Casey was "denied" a speaking slot at the 1992 Democratic convention because of his views on abortion, will the media now make a big deal out of the fact that John McCain reportedly wanted to pick Joe Lieberman as his running mate, but backed down when GOP leaders made clear they would not tolerate such a pick because of Lieberman's views on abortion?"
• This is what vetting looks like – "The new GOP talking point, dutifully repeated in the last 24 hours by McCain's spokesman, by Bill Bennett, by Gary Bauer, by Bill O'Reilly, and pretty much by every Republican surrogate on TV (they're very good at handing out talking points) is that the blogs are mean. That's John McCain's only response to the revelation that he didn't vet his choice for vice president of the United States? That bloggers are mean? Wow. If John McCain can't handle words from DailyKos, how is he going to handle bombs from Al Qaeda? But putting that aside, what really irks the Republicans is that the blogs, and the corporate media, did the vetting of Sarah Palin that McCain failed, and refused, to do"
• Seattle Voters May Decide on Bag Tax – <em>Beginning with these 3,400 questions, Science Debate 2008 worked with the leading organizations listed to craft the top 14 questions the candidates should answer. These questions are broad enough to allow for wide variations in response, but they are specific enough to help guide the discussion toward many of the largest and most important unresolved challenges currently facing the United States. </em>