Debate

Well, one of the problems with cooking burgers for people during the debate is that you're cooking burgers for people during the debate. So I only saw about a quarter (I'm going to watch the whole thing tonight.) But I will say that Obama seemed to be doing exactly what he needed to: proving he was calm, intelligent, and reassuring as a leader. And McCain sounded nervous to me -- there was all of this tension in his voice. I thought he was sweating. Obama doesn't need to win anything -- if he shows he'd be a cool head in tight situations, and people come to feel comfortable with him, it's over. And McCain stop Obama from sounding intelligent or staying cool. Put a fork in the straight talk express.

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Debate watching

I'm having some friends over to watch the debate tonight with beer and burgers (and gasp, we're not all rooting for the same team). But tonight also marks the anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. It's a striking anniversary for this debate. Of course, the 19th Amendment came at the heels of the 18th, prohibition. As boywonder notes, in some ways, prohibition wasn't such a bad thing:

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Tech news

So I spent last night pulling apart my laptop to replace the cooling paste that's between the heatsink and the CPU. It's been overheating lately, and I had a feeling it had something to do with when I swapped out the old 1.6 GHz cpu for a newer, 2 GHz chip a year ago (ran 70-92C hot but much faster!). (Don't try this at home -- completely disassembling a laptop is not for the faint of heart. But with a 4 year old laptop that you still love, it's worth it.)

It took me a couple of hours and had me up till 2 -- but this time I read up on how to clean the cpu and the heatsink properly (go go google search). And now the CPU is running rock solid at 43 degrees C running flat-out on a cpu test. It went through the night like that. I feel like my baby just brought home straight A's.

On an alternate note, iTunes 8 is pretty but the video craps out in WinXP. I've tried a lot of troubleshooting (can't even reinstall the old 7.4 version). Maybe they're trying to drive me over to Mac... On the plus side, the Genius function is fun so far, though combined with 1-click my checkbook might take a big hit. The funny thing about Apple stuff -- if a competitor program like win media player pulled this crap it'd be in the trash. But it's love, you know? I guess I'm not *really* a PC.

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McCain calls "game on"

Well there's no deal in Washington tonight, but I guess the car passed. "Time in!"

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McCain meltdown continues: what next?

Slate has an idea -- more Hail Marys:

1. Returns to Vietnam and jails himself.
2. Offers the post of "vice vice president" to Warren Buffett.
3. Challenges Obama to suspend campaign so they both can go and personally drill for oil offshore.
4. Learns to use computer.
5. Does bombing run over Taliban-controlled tribal areas of Pakistan.
6. Offers to forgo salary, sell one house.
7. Sex-change operation.
8. Suspends campaign until Nov. 4, offers to start being president right now.
9. Sells Alaska to Russia for $700 billion.
10. Pledges to serve only one term. OK, half a term.

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Douthat Agonistes

Ross Douthat, senior editor over at The Atlantic, seems to be struggling with this election. I can't count the times something huge has happened in the campaign, and it takes him some time before he can sit down and compose a message about it (not that he's a very prolific blogger, but yesterday he had 2-3 posts on the Yankees and none on McCain's time-out).

Today he offers an apologia:

If you're wondering why I was writing about baseball yesterday instead of leaping into the debate over whether John McCain's decision to suspend his campaign and call for the delay of tomorrow night's debate was a bold act of leadership, a brilliant piece of political theater, or a pointless, vote-losing stunt, it's because the baseball season suddenly seems a lot more interesting than Presidential politics.

...

All Presidential elections are important, of course, and they're usually important for reasons that nobody sees coming during the election itself. But given the evidence presented to date - the enormous constraints on American action abroad, a fiscal situation that more or less ensures that neither candidate's boldest ideas are likely to get off the ground, and the unimaginative, substance-averse politicking of the candidates themselves - there's good reason to think that the outcome of this election won't be nearly as transformational as many people seem to think.

I assume that last sentence was edited; he must have cut out: "..., I hope." Douthat is a thoughtful conservative, a passionate Christian, and a sharp writer (even if I don't think my porn collection is one step toward adultery). He's pro-life, and he's for fiscal constraint. He was a fan of Palin long before we'd ever heard of her, but worried that McCain's pick might do more damage to her career than good. Consider his position: a president he's supported has burned a hole in the government's check book and steered the economy into collapse. His cadaverous current candidate, as Douthat's noted often, has clearly decided that he's losing on substance, and opted instead for flash and style. And week after week sees some sort of bizarre stunt. Douthat clearly would like to pull for McCain more -- but like many conservatives with a brain (think of George S. Will), he realizes that rash cheerleading might look moronic in the lens of history. So week after week he wrestles with what to say, and what we get is posts on the Yankees. Because that's the story of the day if you're living in D.C. right now. If you're a conservative in Douthat's mold, your greatest political strengths are a sense of moral clarity and a commitment to fiscal discipline. This presidency has destroyed both. What's left? (Well, you could write a book called "Grand New Party" which points to these problems and offers substantive changes to G.O.P. direction, but then you'd garner limitless derision from Rush Limbaugh and watch, from the bleachers with Cassandra, as the party hurls itself off the cliff anyway.)

I imagine it's all a bit like waking up as Sampson with a buzz cut.

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Palin/Couric II -- Miss Teen South Carolina

"The al .. as I say, inaction is not an option, we've got to shore up our economy -- this is crisis moment for America, really the rest of the world also, looking to see the impacts if America were to choose not to shore up what has happened on Wall street because of the, the ultimate adverse effects of what has happened on Main Street and then how that affects this globalization that we're a part of in our world, so the rest of the world really is looking at John McCain, the leadership that he is going to provide on this, and if those provisions in the proposal can be implemented and make this proposal better, make it make more sense to tax payers then again John McCain is going to improve his leadership."

Video here.

And here's Jimmy Kimmel parsing it out.



On a side note -- this is what it feels like to teach Freshman comp. Should I get a medal? Maybe in the Asian countries.

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Suspension? That's just semantics

Mark speaking at Clinton's global initiative today on the list of campaign events McCain has held after suspending his campaign. The inimitable Yglesias had this to say:

It sure was nice of Bill Clinton to put important national concerns above petty partisanship by agreeing to host a John McCain campaign speech and help the GOP nominee burnish his bipartisan credentials. You might think a former President would be so committed to an axe-grinding agenda that he couldn’t see the big picture. But not Bill — he puts country first, not some personal agenda. Oh what’s that you say? His wife ran for the Democratic nomination and lost? Think that might be relevant?

I don't think that sarcasm is Matt's strong suit -- I prefer his muted irony. But the point stands. If only Chris Rock had been invited, too...

I'm sure the McCain campaign doesn't want us to count this as "campaigning" -- and if we tried to push the point, it's just an issue of semantics.

Which is really a segue into one of my most favoristist hobby horses: "semantics" means meaning. We use words to communicate exclusively because they mean something. SO when someone says, "let's not argue about semantics" what they're really saying is "let's not quibble about what we actually mean." But I guess that's playing semantics with semantics. Flarp.

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