Blogging will be somewhere between lax and nonexistent for the next 10 days, because Sarah and I are going to Turkey. While we’re gone, please use the comment area on this post to solve the world’s problems. I’m counting on you!

My brother-in-law Sonny won a contest sponsored by Ford to make a short film about the Ford Mustang. He and his partner were featured in an ad on Knight Rider last night. Congrats, Sonny! You can see the film right here. I haven’t watched it yet, because my flash is all screwy, but I hear it’s fantastic.

Two new videos worth watching. First, David Letterman ripping into McCain last night:

Sarah Palin interviewed by Katie Couric. She looks like someone’s holding a gun to her head and saying, “Act smart! NOW!”

The subtitle of a Salon article on McCain asking to cancel the debates:

McCain is now unlikely to show up for the first scheduled showdown with Obama. Master stroke or campaign in meltdown?

Only in our completely deranged political climate would anyone even entertain the idea that this could be a “masterstroke.” Can you imagine for a minute what would happen if the circumstances were reversed, and the Democrats were running some doddering old white guy who refused to talk to the press, chose an inexperienced governor as his running mate, and was angling to cancel the debates? Who made as many gaffes per day as McCain does? Who reverses his positions by the minute? I have to believe it would be a bloodbath. This campaign is a frigging joke, and it’s still neck and neck. Unbelievable.

And the conclusion of the article is that McCain probably won’t show up for the debate, because he’d look “weak” if he backed down now. So what, now we just aren’t going to see our candidates debate? How can he even do that?

Firedoglake is reporting that the Democrats have reached a compromise on the bailout. As we’ve seen many times before, the Democrats tend to compromise in ways that make Republicans very, very happy. My friends: there is evil afoot.

Update: False alarm. They haven’t given it away yet. There are important photo ops that must happen first. I’ll just ask one question, though … of all the stuff I’ve read, I still can’t understand exactly why our entire economy would collapse if we don’t go with the bailout plan immediately. I think it’s universally accepted that we are facing financial hardships, but any time Bush gets on TV and tells us we have to do something right now or the world is going to fall apart, I get awful skeptical.

Update II: I’m beginning to lose faith that we’re going to see a fair election … I’ve lost track of what’s real and what’s politics at this stage in the game. Are we really facing an immediate crisis, or is this all a huge gamble to keep the Republicans in power? (I have no idea how they could make an economic crisis that they created work in their favor, but they’re truly masters of the “black is white” rhetorical construct.) I’ll leave you with Chris Dodd’s reaction to John McCain’s sudden immediacy on fixing the economy:

“I’m delighted that John is expressing himself on this issue,” said Chris Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. “I have heard form Obama numerous occasions these last couple days. I have never heard from John McCain on the issue… I’m just worried a little bit that sort of politicizing this problem, sort of flying in here, I’m beginning to think this is more of a rescue plan for John McCain and not a rescue plan for the economy.”

Drew just turned me on to the genius of Sad Kermit. I am late to this party, as always. Warning: this gets pretty dirty.

Just as awesome as Sad Kermit are the people who have written angry comments about Sad Kermit.

shmakos88
Anyone who praises this kind of shit are the reasons why incredible music is rare and sadly dying

lambofgod143lh
little green cunt i agree with shmakos88 the music is dying because people think its funny to fuck about with a puppet so the music dies and we never get it back

He called Kermit the frog a little green cunt!

Folsom90 seems somewhat confused:

folsom90
This is DUMB i f*cking HATE Kermit? and all the F*cking Muppits

folsom90
I mean it’s Good, Really Good, Just all the Pornograpic “referenceces” Ruined it

Daltonicpilz thinks Kermit is real:

daltonicpilz:
OMG does kermit wrote this song? or who the fuck was it?

And there’s this, which is pretty much the best comment that anyone has ever made anywhere:

RonnieJamesDiogenes
I love that fucked up kermit!

Update: Am I on crack? I already posted about Sad Kermit months ago.

Must … not … write about … the economy …

The American Prospect has a great article on Rachel Maddow. She’s great. I want to love Keith Olbermann, but his outrage has gotten a little tiresome. Maddow, she’s the real deal.

From Wired: Is Weird Al a genius? Methinks!

A conversation last night brought up this fascinating Harper’s article from last year about post-industrial Detroit. As someone from Clio who pretends he’s from Flint where people pretend they’re from Detroit, it’s nice to read about my hometown.

Also: file under “Well, Duh”:

I like to be receptive to my audience. God knows I need to keep everyone I can. So when Libby told me in the comments that my site was too depressing, I listened. My friends, I am here for you, my friends. And just for you, I will not post a single damn thing today about the coming financial apocalypse or how we will all soon be forced to eat our young to survive. Just to clear the palate, here’s a picture of an adowable fwuzzy widdle kitty:

From Krugman, verbatim:

Daniel Davies, in one of the great blog posts of this era, laid down a key principle:

Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance.

He was talking about the selling of the Iraq war, but it applies more generally.

So, this morning Hank Paulson told a whopper:

We gave you a simple, three-page legislative outline and I thought it would have been presumptuous for us on that outline to come up with an oversight mechanism. That’s the role of Congress, that’s something we’re going to work on together. So if any of you felt that I didn’t believe that we needed oversight: I believe we need oversight. We need oversight.

What the proposal actually did, of course, was explicitly rule out any oversight, plus grant immunity from future review:

Sec. 8. Review.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

I’m not playing gotcha here. This is telling: if Paulson can’t be honest about what he himself sent to Congress — if he not only made an incredible power grab, but is now engaged in black-is-white claims that he didn’t — there is no reason to trust him on anything related to his bailout plan.