Tobias

Tobias Michael Craft-Mathis was born at 1:08 a.m. Sunday Aug. 31st.

Yes, you may call him "Toby." I'll probably stick to Tobias as a rule. Though my preferred shortening will probably be "Tobe."

And he's already got an attitude. He popped out early in the morning, looked at me and said: "What's the latest news on the election?"

"McCain chose Sarah Palin to be his running mate," I said, pleased the son was so quickly taking after his old man.

Tobias looked confused. "What's a sarahpalin?" he asked.

"Well, she's governor of Alaska. Twenty months ago, she was mayor of a town of 9,000 people. Now McCain wants her a heartbeat away from the presidency."

Whereupon my boy, ever so perceptive, made this face:



Mom and baby are doing fine, and doing a better job than than I am of ignoring politics.

Experience

Just to return to this about Sarah Palin one more time: The McCain campaign is claiming she has as much experience as Obama.

Whatever you think about Obama's level of experience, the McCain campaign is plainly lying.

Twenty months ago, Sarah Palin was the mayor of a 9,000-person Alaskan town. Nobody was talking about her future on the national political stage.

Twenty months ago, Barack Obama was in the Senate. On the Foreign Relations Committee. Preparing.

Granted, that's not as much time with federal issues as John McCain. But John McCain is essentially telling the world that Sarah Palin has enough time under her belt to be the leader of the Free World -- the job of the veep, after all, is to be ready to step in for the top guy. And if that's the case, then the debate over Barack Obama's experience is done and finished.

Random, end-of-day political thoughts.

In no particular order...

• The New York Times says McCain's choice of Palin pushes Barack Obama off the front pages very quickly:

Mr. McCain announced on Friday that that he had chosen Gov. Sarah Palin, a solid conservative who has been governor of Alaska for just two years, as his running mate. The choice caught Republicans by surprise, and — as designed by Mr. McCain’s advisers — eclipsed Mr. Obama’s acceptance speech that he had delivered the night before.

I think this is a journalism-centric view of the world. Sure: McCain and Palin will be on the front page of tomorrow's papers. But attention was going to shift pretty quickly from the Dems to the GOP convention anyway; it starts on Monday. And besides: 38 million people watched Obama's speech. That's rather formidable interest in Obama.

• The argument that Sarah Palin's two years as governor give her more executive experience than anybody else on the tickets is A) true and B) lame. Governing a thinly populated state is nothing like running the country. Especially when the thinly populated state is Alaska -- which, sorry to sound shrill here -- is a very weird part of America. Yglesias:

But of course the weird thing about the Alaska Republican Party is that while they send these endlessly re-elected legislators to DC to push for hard-right legislation, pork, and various forms of sleaze they’re running a government based on a weird form of socialism in one giant swathe of sub-arctic wasteland. Normal governors don’t get involved in controversies about state-owned dairy farms and the like (I believe it was Mikhail Gorbachev who moved to privatize the agricultural sector) and there’s no other state whose oil tax revenues are big enough to just cut the entire population welfare checks. It’s a bit hard to know how you shift from that into non-fantasyland world of federal policymaking.

Right. So though Republicans are trying to make the "experience" argument, the fact of the matter is that one ticket has two candidates with relevant experience -- that is, experience dealing with federal issues on a day-to-day basis. The other does not.

Harry Potter for president

Jay Nordlinger at National Review:

Just about all my e-mailers have said that McCain hit a home run today, and that his election prospects are helped immeasurably. From their mouths to You-Know-Who’s ear.

Um... Voldemort?

That said...

Despite my skepticism about the Palin pick, the plain fact is that the presidential tickets this year -- more than ever -- look like America. Two white men, yes, but also a black man and a woman. I think we're at a breaking point; I'm not sure it will be acceptable to the public ever again to have four white guys at the top of the tickets. We're bigger than that, now.

Palin for veep

It's official. And, to my mind, more than a little cynical.

John McCain's best case that he's right for the presidency is that the country needs somebody who is experienced and tough on national security issues. But if he happens to die in office -- God forbid -- apparently the country really doesn't need that experience after all. By picking Palin, McCain loses the ability to effectively make the "experience" argument, and then it comes down to judgment. You know what? I think that's a debate that Barack Obama can win.

I don't think Palin was picked just because she was a woman; apparently she's got good, solid conservative credentials -- just the pick to shore up the faltering GOP base. But I suspect that she wouldn't have earned the nod if she were, say, Samuel Palin. From a party that hates affirmative action in favor of a supposed meritocracy, and which pooh-poohs equal pay for equal work -- and which spent a lot of time during the primaries mocking the Democrats for so-called "identity politics" -- the selection of Palin is, well, pretty rich.

This is friggin' brilliant

Portrayal Of Obama As Elitist Hailed As Step Forward For African Americans

Drugs

Kathleen Parker is in rare form at The Corner tonight, bemoaning the DNC:

I'm not sure I can get through this evening without medication. I'm plumb out of marshmallows and my kumbaya jug done run dry.

And later posting an e-mail from a reader:

Don't say things like that.

Hillary will say that it's Bush's fault that you can't afford the medication;

Biden will rant about the recession causing you to run out of marshmallows, and

Obama, as a piece de resistance, will ensure that your kumbaya jug refills itself automatically from now on, like that trick he did with the loaves and fishes a while back.

Unmentioned was the response from John McCain and George Bush, who both would suggest that Kathleen can simply go to the emergency room. It's like have marshmallow insurance, only way more expensive and without the benefits of preventive marshmallow care. And if she dies or goes broke paying for marshmallows -- well, hell, her death is a small price to pay for avoiding socialism. Right?

Will there be no end to the negative advertising?

John McCain is turning into somebody I don't love.

But, uh, credit where it's due: This is classy.



"Tomorrow we'll be back at it." (Sigh.) Well, at least we had 30 seconds of classiness during this campaign.

Some ways in which Philly is completely unlike Kansas

High on the list: There's a "Malcolm X Park" here.

Unless I'm greatly mistaken, there's no such thing in my entire state.

On a random note: My iPod is amazingly consistent about picking a jazz tune to play every time I walk through Rittenhouse Square in the mornings. This week: John Coltrane, Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra. It kind of makes living here feel like the opening Gershwin montage from "Manhattan" every morning.

LBJ and Obama

Robert Caro's ongoing biography of Lyndon Johnson hasn't been just a fascinating history -- it has also been, to my mind, a service to the nation. This week is LBJ's 100th birthday. And Caro reflects in today's New York Times:

LOOK what has been wrought! Forty-three years ago, a mere blink in history’s eye, many black Americans were unable to vote. Tonight, a black American ascends a stage as nominee for president. “Just give Negroes the vote and many of these problems will get better,” Lyndon Johnson said. “Just give them the vote,” and they can do the rest for themselves.

All during this long primary campaign, after reading, first thing every morning, newspaper articles about Barack Obama’s campaign for the presidency, I would turn, as part of the research for my next book, to newspaper articles from 1965 about Lyndon Johnson’s campaign to win for black people the right to vote.

And I would think about Johnson’s great speech, when he adopted the rallying cry of black protest as his own, when he joined his voice to the voices of all the men and women who had sung the mighty hymn of the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King cried when he heard that speech. Since I am not black, I cannot know — cannot even imagine — Dr. King’s feelings. I know mine, however. To me, Barack Obama is the inheritor of Lyndon Johnson’s civil rights legacy. As I sit listening to Mr. Obama tonight, I will be hearing other words as well. I will be hearing Lyndon Johnson saying, “We shall overcome.”

Read the whole thing.

NOOOOOOO!!!!

Did the Democratic National Convention band really just follow Bill Clinton's speech with a cover of "Addicted to Love"?

Yes. Yes it did. Smart, guys.

Green Philly

Here's an interactive map I created for Philadelphia Weekly, documenting "green" locations around town -- businesses, institutions, nature sites, etc. Most of the locations were suggested by the public, using a modest (and old-fashioned) form of crowdsourcing: We put an announcement in the paper.


View Larger Map

City living

I arrived in Philadelphia one month ago today.

Since then, I've spent 40 minutes a day, five days a week, walking to and from work. Not out of any sense of "Now I'm going to live healthy!" but because it's the mode of transportation -- bicycles aside -- that makes the most sense. I certainly haven't made many other lifestyle changes; I'm eating just as ravenously as ever.

This morning, I slipped the belt in a notch. City living is good for me.

Andy McCarthy is a lawyer?

National Review's Andy McCarthy manages to turn the purported Barack Obama assassination plot into an opportunity to -- nonsensically -- attack Barack Obama:

Maybe Sen. Obama will have a new appreciation for law-enforcement, and for the fact (which most on the Left won't entertain) that sometimes when police stop and search someone — without a warrant! — for mere erratic driving, they really do discover far more serious crime.

Let's break this down real quick:

* What is McCarthy's evidence that Obama doesn't have an appreciation for law enforcement? Did I miss out on something? Or is McCarthy just applying the old "soft on crime" label at a Democrat in the absence of any real evidence?

* McCarthy, who was a criminal lawyer, surely knows that in the absence of a warrant, a police officer must have probable cause to conduct a search -- they aren't required to ignore, say, a bong sitting on the front seat of a car they've pulled over. Establishing that probable cause during a traffic stop isn't all that hard -- I've sat through dozens of court hearings -- but it does prevent police from just searching people willy nilly for no reason at all. There may not be a warrant, but officers must still meet certain standards so that the rights of citizens aren't trampled. In the case of an erratic driver, establishing that probable cause probably would have been ridiculously easy.

The system apparently worked correctly in this case. And it worked -- again apparently -- within civil liberties safeguards that conservatives of McCarthy's ilk disdain. He's trying to score cheap political points without regard for accuracy or reality.

Democrats and religion

Jay Nordlinger at National Review:

I see that the Democrats have opened with a prayer — doing the religious thang. Uh-oh. They’re gettin’ smart. They were easier to beat when they were just like the Berkeley sociology department, only more sneering.

Somehow, though, I think we can depend on Republicans to continue to depict Democrats as the Berkeley sociology department, regardless of what else happens.

Mope

We are the Weezer fans we've been looking for.

Adventures in geography

I'm at the bank this morning, making a deposit, when the perfectly lovely young teller looks at my I.D. and says: "Kansas? Is that like a desert?"

Well, no, though I suppose it might look like one to the Pennsylvania eye. The teller then asked me a series of questions about what the heck there was to do in Kansas, culminating in the following exchange:

TELLER: So are there lots of beaches out there?

ME: (After a second of silence.) Ummm, no. Kansas is the most landlocked state in the union.

TELLER: (After an additional, perplexed second of silence.) So how do you get to the beaches?

The conversation, mercifully, ended soon thereafter.

Philly Photos: Young artist on the street

18th and Walnut streets, August 2008:

Correction

A few months ago -- when I was still (alas) a professional pundit -- I was on a panel at the University of Kansas to talk about the nascent presidential campaign. And I made a prediction that was utterly, wildly off the mark.

Which was this: I said I thought that with John McCain and Barack Obama leading their party's respective tickets, we were unlikely to see much in the way of negative campaigning from either side this fall. I had one caveat, though: If it was still close in late October, the gloves would come off.

Boy, was I wrong. Most likely: Naive.

I've found our politics a little discouraging this week. Don't get me wrong: I know it ain't beanbag. But I enjoy it most when there's a thoughtful exchange of ideas going on in our disagreements. This may have a little something to do with my own personality; I waited a long time to get married until I found a woman with whom I was unlikely to have screaming arguments. I don't like them in life, and I don't like them in politics. Which makes my interest in politics a little weird, I grant you.

So let me say this: I think that both Barack Obama and John McCain probably are, by and large, honorable men -- or, at least, no more or less honorable than the next American. Richer? Yes, both of them. Have there been times in their lives when they erred in their judgements or associations? Certainly, both of them. It happens that I believe one man would be a better president than the other, but I don't think that makes either of them a better or worse man than the other.

Which is why I -- and, I suspect, many Americans -- find the way we do our politics so odious. Because it's not enough to characterize our political opponents as wrong; they have to be bad. We have to do more than make the voters disagree with the other guy; we have to make them fear him, as well.

Some of this is probably natural. Politics is an expression of values; if somebody doesn't share your politics, that means they don't share your values -- you are going to be inclined to think a little bit less of them. (You don't have to do so, but that is the inclination.) The problem is that presidential campaigns aren't merely a time when those inclinations become most noticeable; it's that the candidates make capitalizing on those inclinations part of their strategy, and thereby exacerbate them.

Is this bad for us? I think so. Not because rough-and-tumble is inherently bad, but because our politics is based on falsehoods and distortions as the normal state of things. I'm not sure if that's sustainable.

McCain, apparently, was a POW

I don't want to make light of John McCain's service in Vietnam, especially his time as a POW. But his campaign is sure starting to look really silly by playing the POW card every time their candidate comes in for criticism.

The latest row, of course, is over McCain's supposed inability to remember how many houses he owns. It's silly, of course, but there's been a lot of silliness. Still, really?

"This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years — in prison."

Really really?

This just days over the also-silly "cone of silence" dustup after Saddleback:

“The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous,” Ms. Wallace said.

Oh, c'mon. POWs can lie and cheat; suffering may ennoble, but it doesn't render you without sin or the capability of sin.

If John McCain wants us to keep respecting his POW status, he needs to stop cheapening it by playing it as a "get out of jail free" card every time somebody says something critical of him.

Philly Photos: Artists on the street

I saw this guy Monday night in the park:



And this guy tonight, while waiting to take the bus home with Jocelyn:



Art is all around us.

Wow.

Real employment is taking a toll on the old bloggy bloggy, isn't it?

Too bad. I like writing. And I'm missing it right now.

Noted without context

My favorite sentence in this week's New Yorker:

They didn't anticipate, however, that a human being running at a pace of ten and a half miles an hour naturally expels a rectal thermometer.

Given my Lawrence allegiances, I'll note that sentence describes activities at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Philly humor

We're surrounded by history in this town. Everything is the oldest this or the oldest that in the United States.



Except when it's not.

Philly Photos: Fitler Square farmers market

When Jo and I moved to Philly, I mourned the loss of lazy Saturday mornings spent at the Lawrence Farmers Market.

What was I thinking?

Turns out Fitler Square has a farmers market every Saturday morning. It's not nearly so big as the one in Lawrence -- but this one is just 100 feet from our front door. And it has something the market in Kansas will never have: crab cakes.



UPDATE: Grrrr. The Photoshop slideshow player doesn't want to work for me today. If you're interested, here's a photo...



... and here's my Flickr photostream.

Philly Photos: Café Lutécia

My friend Marilyn is an awesome and prolific food-blogger and photographer. This one goes out to her!

Down the street from our new digs is a little French café. It was closed for vacation when we moved in -- apparently, lots of small Philly businesses close for a week or two during the summer -- but it opened again this week. Jocelyn and I went there for breakfast this morning. It's this kind of place: Gallic covers of Marvin Gaye songs and idolotrous posters of Yves Montand on the wall.

And brie. Lots of brie.



We picked a spot by the window. First thing's first: A cup of coffee -- and what's this? A stack of New Yorker magazines? I'm at home!



It's not all snooty pretention, though:



Jocelyn picks her morning tea...



... and pours.



I go for the scrumptious cranberry scone. No heavy American breakfast here; it's all Continental.



Jo went with the raisin (ugh!) bagel and cream cheese.



We shall return.

In which I agree with something found at National Review Online

Andrew Stuttaford:

What we have to recognize is that Russia is a (sorta) great power trying to do what great powers do. This will involve plenty of jostling, shoving, pushing, and all the rest of it. It won't always be pretty, particularly given the KGB-stained nature of Russia's current leadership. On occasion, the U.S. will have to shove back, and shove back very firmly. That said, to try using what's going on in Georgia (as some seem inclined to do) as the inspiration of some sort of revived Cold War is not the way to go. It's critical to remember that what rivalry there is between the U.S. and Russia is not ideological to any meaningful degree. Moscow is neither Riyadh nor Tehran. Yes, yes, at some level, Russia is, and will remain, a strategic competitor. That's fine. In a multi-polar world, that's life. At, another, deeper, and more important level, however, many of Russia's strategic interests are aligned with those of the U.S. The trick will be in getting the Kremlin to act on that ultimately reassuring fact.

I was trying to say something similar in the column Ben and I wrote this week for Scripps. I'll post a link later when it's available.

UPDATE: Here's the column. Actually, Stuttaford said something smarter than what I said. I think we're coming at the same idea from different sides. I'm suggesting that the United States can no longer really dominate world events; Stuttaford is saying that Russia probably isn't trying to, either ... and that we shouldn't treat it like it is.

Pressing issues of international importance

OK, I really wasn't ever going to make a big deal of this particular issue. But then I saw the cover of Meghan McCain's new children's book:



I'm sorry, but doesn't the artist's rendering of John McCain make it appear as though he has a thick and lustrous -- thus, oh heck, non-old -- head of hair?

Can't we all agree to speak the truth out loud? John McCain has a comb-over.



Now, there's nothing wrong with this...

I'm lying. Comb-overs are dishonest. What's worse, they're ridiculous dishonesty. The main who wears a comb-over is telling the world: "We're going to pretend that I have hair on top of my head. But I know I don't, and you -- if you look at me for more than three seconds -- also know I don't. But we're both going to accept the pretense nonetheless. Thank you for helping me maintain the illusion of dignity."

It's a dangerous -- Orwellian -- message sent by a potential president to the country that he wants to lead. And ask yourself this: Who was the last president with a combover?

Philly Photos

Ah, the warm glow of home. Taken as I arrive back at the apartment right at dusk.



A saxophone player in Rittenhouse Square, as I was walking home one evening. When I tried to get a closer shot, he just walked away. Sorry, everybody else in Rittenhouse.



The fountain at Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia. Unfortunately, everybody else has photographed this,too.

Coming soon: Philly Phideo. (Sorry. You've got to start every proper noun with a PH in this town. I don't make the rules.)

Andy McCarthy is angry

Not sure why Andy McCarthy, of all conservatives, constantly sticks in my craw as somebody crying out to be responded to -- but there you go. He's griping about diplomacy (of course) again today:

I wonder what the State Department will say the Soviet rebirth means for its preposterous diplomatic strategy to look like it's doing something to prevent Iran from building nukes.

In May 2006, when the administration abandoned the Bush Doctrine as well as long-standing U.S. policy to refrain from direct official contacts in favor of Secretary Rice's preference for face-to-face negotiations with terrorists, Condi aides chirped that their deal "commits China and Russia to a long list of specific steps to punish Iran if it refuses to halt its enrichment program.” Less than three months later, when it was painfully apparent that the king had no clothes, State conceded that, in fact, there were no such commitments.

Yet, it remains our "policy" to rely on this diplomacy and, of course, the good graces of Comrade Putin.

Sometimes I think that the chief conservative complaint with diplomacy is that it's not easy. (If the complaint is that we have to talk to people we don't like, well, grow up already, Andy.)

With diplomacy, we don't always get exactly what we want -- and often, it takes a long time to get to that imperfect result, often with starts, stops and backsliding along the way. And that is, admittedly, greatly frustrating.

Let us look at what military action gets us, most recently in Iraq, where many conservatives are ready to declare victory. If the security gains turn out to be more or less permanent, the result of five years of war has been imperfect, made with starts, stops and backsliding along the way. It has been frustrating. But it has also come with a much greater cost than diplomacy, in terms of blood, treasure and lost opportunities to keep Al Qaeda -- the one that attacked us, not the one created by our invasion of Iraq -- on the defensive. The war, though, initially seemed like a relatively quick and easy success. And military action is certainly more viscerally appealing in some ways; it's easier to tell if you're winning or losing, and at any rate is sure looks and feels like you're doing something.

Either way, it's rare that we'll make the world exactly as we want it. We can either get that imperfect result quickly, but with a high cost, or we can choose to be patient -- and ready to defend ourselves, if necessary -- and not add to the level of danger-making instability in the world. You don't have to agree with my view of things, but I'm not sure why folks like Andy McCarthy have such contempt for it.

"Hot chicks dig Obama"

Oh lordy. It's only August; this is just going to get stupider and stupider, isn't it?

UPDATE: This obviously isn't going to air on TV -- not as a paid advertisement, anyway -- because there's no "I'm John McCain and I approved this ad" stuff at the end. I think he understands applying his face and name to this particular commercial might do more harm than good.

I kissed a girl

Apparently, Kate Perry's "I Kissed a Girl" is the song of the summer -- it's been atop the charts for seven of the summer's 13 weeks, making it the mathematical champion of 2008. Which is why I'm not really down with the kids anymore; demographics aside, it's astonishing to me that such frat-boy pornography-fueled vapidity could be so popular.

Well, ok. It's not astonishing. But it is irritating. Damn kids!

As a counterprotest, I offer up old-school "I Kissed a Girl," above, from Jill Sobule. It's sweet, honest and has nothing (or very little to do) with titilating dudes.

Latté-drinking conservatives

From the LA Times, a story about a conservative coffeehouse in Indiana:

Behind the counter, owner Dave Beckham smiled proudly in a T-shirt with the face of Uncle Sam on it that read "Zip It Hippie."

The T-shirt is for sale at the cafe. So are others, including one with a peace sign that says "Peace Through Superior Firepower."

"It's a change from the traditional liberal bastion coffeehouses," Beckham said. "No one is going to bad-mouth America in here."

He so nails it. Man, when I hang out at the liberal coffeehouses, all we do is quote Mao and talk about how we would really like to surrender to the terrorists -- but gosh darn, those mean conservatives won't let us!

But here's the secret. Since our secret flouridation-to-take-over-America plan didn't work out, our Leninist masters went to Plan B. The combination of coffee and foamed milk, it turns out, releases a byproduct chemical that makes regular consumers vulnerable to socialist thought. Beckham is playing right into our hands! Bwahahahaha!

The war on terror

During my move from Kansas to Philly, I'd missed this:

A new study from the RAND Corporation examined how 648 terror groups around the world ended between 1968 and 2006. It found that by far the most common way for them to disappear was to be absorbed by the political process. The second most common way was to be defeated by police work. In contrast, in only 7 percent of cases did military force destroy the terrorist group.

“There is no battlefield solution to terrorism,” the report declares. “Military force usually has the opposite effect from what is intended.”

Which presidential candidate do you think will make better use of that information?

Don't hate the game

As a journalist who once spent quite a bit of time covering criminal trials, I've always had a bit of disdain for people who criticized the juries that sat through days and weeks of testimony and spent days more weighing evidence to arrive at a verdict. So you can figure out what I make of this post from Andy McCarthy:

I have been a defender of the military commission system (though, as I've also argued, we can and should do better, namely a national security court). But as we've seen before, military judges make whopper mistakes too — recall for example the one who tried to dismiss the charges against the detainee Omar Khadr.

Calling the one today a whopper does not come close to doing it justice.

Naval Captain Keith Allred, the military judge in Salim Hamdan's case, today sentenced Osama bin Laden's former driver and confidant to 5 1/2 years — that's FIVE-AND-A-HALF years — in prison for the war crime of providing material support to the terror network with which we are still at war and which continues killing and trying to kill Americans. Worse, it appears Hamdan will get credit for time served, which means his sentence will be deemed over in a matter of months if not sooner.

It is the worst sentence I have ever heard of. It demonstrates an unseriousness about the war and the stakes involved. It is a deep blow to those fighting to defend the commissions and for a different system for dealing with terrorists. Why not send them to the civilian court system, critics will ask with great force. After all, the judges there have shown they take terrorism seriously — they have routinely sentenced lesser players than a personal aide to bin Laden (one who kept him alive and helped sustain al Qaeda) to 30 and more years.

So, he's been a defender of the military commissions system. But because it comes up with one result he deems "bad," he's ready to junk it?

And, oh yeah, the military officers who made up the jury that imposed the sentence are "unserious about the war on terror?" One should always hesitate to apply the "chickenhawk" label, but I'm straining for some less inflammatory label that still makes accurate sense to me.

Short of creating obvious kangaroo courts (which, lets face it, is what the commissions system was originally meant to be) any system designed to balance justice and due process rights is going to come up with the occasional "bad" result. McCarthy, a lawyer, surely knows that. It appears he prefers the kangaroo courts.

Nixonland

Lots of Rick Perlstein's Nixonland concerns the psychology of the great man himself. Nixon, Perlstein says, was a sweaty and unpopular kid who longed desperately to be one of the cool kids -- and made a political career or tapping into the similar resentments of a great many Americans.

So, it's not a stretch to say the McCain campaign has become positively Nixonian, based on the ad above. Never mind that the ad misrepresents Obama's stance on taxes. His chief aim is to make voters resentful of Obama for being admired. My friend Ben says that Obama's ability to inspire is "demagoguery." But it seems that word applies much better to McCain's decision to suggest that Obama's popularity is a reason that McCain himself should be president.

Culture shock

I knew that living in Philadelphia would be different than living in Kansas. I knew that living in Philadelphia would be more expensive than living in Kansas.

But last night I paid nearly $14 for a six-pack of Guinness bottles. Or roughly $5 more than I paid for the same six-pack in Lawrence. WTF? Isn't Pennsylvania closer to Ireland? How does this work?

Looks like I picked the wrong day to stop stop drinking.

No Oscar for Heath Ledger

Eric Lucas takes to the pages of the L.A. Times today to say that Heath Ledger needs no Oscar -- he's already gotten what he deserves:

He's not a tragic hero. He's not a beautiful martyr. He's just a pretty good actor who did away with himself and broke the hearts of his family and friends, and he shouldn't get an Academy Award to memorialize his death.

Now I happen to think Ledger gave a pretty amazing performance -- although it seemed at times that he was channeling Carol Channing. (Watch that clip, and see if you don't hear Ledger-as-Joker working over the "Jam tomorrow, jam yesterday, but never jam today!" in more or less the same fashion as Channing.) But if we shouldn't reward Ledger, after his death, for the behavior that caused the death, neither should we penalize him. Judge the performance on its own merits.

Dirty pool

Here's the funny thing: I grew up in Kansas, and while I've never owned guns, I have plenty of friends who did. And I've thus had the opportunity to (I think safely) shoot a a variety of firearms. I have respect for most gun owners, and for the Second Amendment right of gun ownership.

But the NRA is probably evil.