The Bailout Bill. I don’t need to provide a link to that. You know what I’m talking about and if you read this years from now you’ll still know. It’ll be remembered in history, I’m afraid.

Today feels a little bit like 9/11 to me. On that day, after watching the events unfold on television all morning I went out with my wife and 20 month old daughter. It was a beautiful day in Chicago. We walked to the playground just off Michigan Avenue, in the shadow of the Ritz-Carlton. The streets were quiet. The few people who were out acknowledged each other and the tragedy silently. At the playground I said hello to another dad there with his children and commented only on what a nice day it was. He agreed that it was beautiful weather. But everybody knew things had changed.

Today wasn’t like that. At my office, everyone I talked to was ambivalent if they had an opinion at all. I commented to a co-worker that the weather forecast was wrong. The clouds hadn’t broken all day. People know that things are bad but they are mostly concerned with how much all this government spending is going to ultimately cost them. Here’s some perspective on that.

Principled people of all stripes have argued that the bailout is wrong. A moral offense. I’m completely unconvinced. This is a good time set aside morals and principles and get some shit done. Others have argued, more convincingly, that it’s just a bad idea. I’m open to that. At this point, I’m hoping they are right.

P.S. When thinking of a title for this post “Econocalypse” just came to me. But I’m not the first one to use it!

John McCain, near the end of the first prez debate with Barack Obama:

So we have a long way to go in our intelligence services. We have to do a better job in human intelligence. And we’ve got to — to make sure that we have people who are trained interrogators so that we don’t ever torture a prisoner ever again.

McCain Sides With Bush On Torture Again, Supports Veto Of Anti-Waterboarding Bill

 John McCain’s Torture Tightrope

John McCain, Torture Enabler

McCain: Against Torture, But

McCain supports Bush veto of bill banning harsh interrogation tactics

Doesn’t want CIA limited to methods used by military

John McCain Supports Torture

From TPM:

Chuck Schumer namechecks Scylla and Charybdis. Which is both impressive (classical Greek literature!) and really lame. These guys are working on a solution to the banking crisis? Really?

Heard this song on shuffle today. My impressions of Radiohead have changed a great deal from when I was actively listening to them, mostly in the late 90’s. They sound much more conventional now. This is, no doubt, partly due to familiarity. It may even be a measure of how far they bent rock/pop convention so that it now includes them. They have been influential, in other words. But what really strikes me is Thom Yorke’s beautiful, beautiful voice. I don’t know how much notice his singing gets; most of the talk about Radiohead focusses on the arrangements and compositions. Those are good enough but it’s his voice that stands out for me.

Also, before there was Radiohead there was Can.

When John McCain’s captors say he wasn’t tortured I don’t believe them for a second. Maybe they didn’t torture by George Bush’s definition of the term which is to say, they didn’t cause organ failure or death. Still, this Al Jazeera video is interesting. It’s a shame the American media is so uninterested in the rest of the world. 

Recently I feel that every time I read something in Slate I get a little stupider and less happy. But there are exceptions! Anything by Dahlia Lithwick, for instance. I adore her. Now I adore her even more. Having sworn off Slate, I’d likely have never seen this if it weren’t for The Editors over at The Poor Man Institute. 

Sarah Palin has a great career as a right-wing radio talk show host in front of her. Personally, I wish her all the best in that endeavor. Just keep her away from my government.

UPDATE: The RNC, after McCain’s acceptance speech, is playing “Barracuda” by Heart. I’m going to predict now that this will be the theme song when Palin’s radio show goes into national syndication. I’m serious.

Ah, now I don’t have to write this post. James Fallows got it already.

That was my first reaction to the news that John McCain had selected an unknown, inexperienced governor of a tiny state. Tinier than Rhode Island by any practical political measure - we’ve got four electoral votes to Alaska’s three. North Dakota has three, for christsakes. It’s not possible for a state to be tinier or less significant as a national political entity than is Alaska. You can only tie it.

Anyway, yeah, I thought this was a huge misstep. I was jubilant. I figured by the mid-afternoon the world would have reached a consensus that McCain, trying to be all mavericky and shit, was soon to find himself in a hole at the bottom of the cliff he’d selected to walk off. Well, what do I know. Apparently the wingnuts are ecstatic. Palin is on the extreme end of the anti-abortion movement (no exceptions and all that), is a global warming denier, wants creationism in the classroom, anti-gay, and so on down the line. So, the social conservatives are excited about McCain finally. She’s got that going for her. But wouldn’t those cretins have showed up to vote anyway? They can’t hate McCain more than they fear Obama, surely?

Obviously, obviously this is a shrewd attempt to woo those mad-as-hell Hillary supporters into McCain’s corner. Except that it isn’t shrewd; it’s just obviously obvious. Nobody is getting suckered here. Still, she’s gonna try. Turning Democrats on themselves by selecting someone they felt uncomfortable attacking (a woman!) would be a neat act of political jijutsu. But this looks more like seppuku to me.

UPDATE: Uh, her name is Sarah Palin. In six months nobody will remember that.

UPDATE: This is awesome:

UPDATE: Never misunderestimate the stupidity of Slate writers. 

I rode in my second ever cycling race today. My first was just this past Sunday morning. Both were criteriums - riding multiple laps on a short course. Sunday was hard. I expended a lot of energy needlessly chasing riders breaking away from the main pack. These riders always slowed and dropped back into the group. It saps your energy to try to stay out front and gives you little advantage. I promised myself that my second race, the one today, would be different. Well, it was and it wasn’t. Again, I ended up pulling, that is, riding at the very front and taking all the wind. In fact, I pulled for the last three laps. I was pretty annoyed that the pace was so slow and thought I’d just hit a comfortable stride and if everyone else wanted to draft let ‘em. So that’s what I did. I expected a final push from the well-rested riders behind me that would be hard to keep up with. But it didn’t come. I just widened a gap along with one other rider. In the end I came in fourth because, you see, there was a break away group of two that had long left us in the dust. Next time I’m going to be in that group! But pulling the main pack for three laps and then still kicking ass at the end felt great.

http://nbxbikes.com/page.cfm?pageID=37

Students at Bridgewater-Raritan High School in suburban New Jersey raise $2000 for a bike rack. The school refuses.

Offended by the snub, students promptly began planning a response. Yesterday, more than 50 students rode their bikes to school, commuting in pairs and groups. After studying up on state biking laws — and carrying copies with them — the students legally tethered their bikes in conspicuous clusters around lamp posts, trees and other poles dotting the circular drive in front of the school.

It seems the school administration feels that biking to school is not safe. They may be right about that. But then lots of things aren’t safe. Taking a larger view, cars are unsafe on the macro level (?) in terms of accident fatalities and on the micro level (?) through their contribution to global warming. But in the immediate, bikes are, perhaps, a bigger risk then pulling up at the drop off curb in the cage.

I’m a cyclist and a reluctant driver. I’m really, seriously emotionally invested in the idea of riding bikes to save the world. But I don’t ride to school with my daughter because I fear for her safety in morning traffic. So, how’s this? The school is right in the particular but wrong on every other level. Could they do something to make the routes leading to the school safer? Traffic taming, bike paths, traffic lights, speed limits - there are a lot of partial solutions out there. Some combination of these would make it possible for me to feel differently about getting my daughter on her bike every morning.

And then there’s the “suburbs” factor. The way Americans have chosen to live is the biggest obstacle. And that’s not changing. We’ll drive to the mall or stay inside and watch TV. The nearest store will be too far to walk. There will be no sidewalks.

We may save ourselves if we can convert our economy to clean electric power. But it’ll still be difficult to ride a bike to school safely.