"Our last number will be the issue dated September 30, the first day of Rosh Hashanah."

Goodbye to the New York Sun.

It's sad to see a newspaper die, and the New York Sun occupied a special niche. I visited the Sun about a year ago, and was perfectly charmed by the stunningly retro environment...



... and all the wonderful, dedicated people there.

"Dinosaur-human relations are not, to the best of my knowledge, part of the bailout debate and its partisanship..."

"... otherwise known as the subjects of this thread."

Said Freeman Hunt, in that thread yesterday that went awry.



Thanks to Palladian for the LOLdino.

Now, did Sarah Palin say that "dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time"? I don't know, but it's such a charming, distracting controversy, compared to the -- what is it? -- impending depression.

ADDED: A little theme music [removed, years later, because it became unavailable].

"Every suspicion you have about MSM being in the tank for O is true."

Do you believe this? I do. Unfortunately. Tragic, the loss of professionalism.

"Barack Obama failed to lead, phoned it in, attacked John McCain and refused to even say if he supported the final bill."

The McCain blames Obama. But does Obama blame McCain?

AND: The House Republicans blame Pelosi. She "struck the tone of partisanship," they say, striking the tone of partisanship.

The bailout fails!

Crash!

ADDED: They just couldn't choke down that crap sandwich!

Woe to us all! Right? Or... not....

Here's how ABC ends a blogpost about Obama standing in the pouring rain to give a speech.

On an ominous note:

Astute students of history have noted, weather is not something politicians should take lightly. The presidency of William Henry Harrison, indeed Harrison's life lasted a mere month after after he caught a cold at his inauguration, which was held outside on a chilly Washington morning.

Yikes.

Drudge has a cool photo:



Then there's this:

As the rain began to pour harder, Obama noticed his running mate’s stool close to the edge of the slippery stage.

"I'm gonna ask Joe to move that stool up because I don't want to have to choose another vice-president," Obama joked. "I don't want him slipping over, toppling over there."

That's not what I heard.

Let's look at the photos the NYT uses to illustrate a piece titled "On Bailout, Candidates Were Surely Themselves."

Here's the arty and cool but distorted and disturbing picture of McCain.

And here's the elegant and eminently presidential Mr. Obama.

Journalistic bias? Well, maybe the article -- a Patrick Healy "Political Memo" -- supports it:

It was classic John McCain and classic Barack Obama who grappled with the $700 billion bailout plan over the last week: Mr. McCain was by turns action-oriented and impulsive as he dive-bombed targets, while Mr. Obama was measured and cerebral and inclined to work the phones behind the scenes....

As Mr. McCain appeared as a man in motion last week, Mr. Obama’s cautious side was on clear display....

Mr. McCain, meanwhile, thrives in the fray....

Mr. Obama does not tend to take fiery or partisan swipes just for the sake of them....

Voters list the economy as a priority, and Mr. Obama’s placid public approach may not mesh with the anger that many of them feel. But Democrats say that in the long run, Mr. Obama’s approach will appear as an appealing alternative to President Bush and his choice as a successor, Mr. McCain.

So the choice of pictures is absolutely appropriate. You may question Healy's analysis, but the pictures perfectly illustrate it.

I happen to like Healy's analysis. I've called Obama phlegmatic. I wonder how he keeps going and how he inspires when he seems so low energy. But there's something subtly amirable in that stolid stability.

Remember when Obama promoted himself as having "the right temperament for the presidency"? He said: "I don't get too high when I'm high, and I don't get too low when I'm low."

Does that seem like a good idea about now?

"You are also a paid astrotroller."

A comment on the "Brokaw's bizarre" post that got me wondering.

I know what an astrotroll/astrotroller is (and it hasn't even got an Urban Dictionary definition, which makes me feel very in-the-know). It's a commenter engaged in astroturfing.

Wikipedia says:

Astroturfing in American English is a neologism for formal public relations campaigns in politics and advertising which seek to create the impression of being spontaneous "grassroots" behavior, hence the reference to the artificial grass, AstroTurf.

The goal of such a campaign is to disguise the efforts of a political or commercial entity as an independent public reaction to some political entity—a politician, political group, product, service or event.

Does anyone really think that some of the commenters here are paid representatives of any political campaign or cause? It seems to me that there are many self-appointed boosters of one candidate or another, willing to put in a lot of effort for no pay. I've seen the comments of the particular individual who was accused of astrotrolling, but I can't believe a campaign would pay someone just to post numerous boring/abusive comments. Wouldn't the campaign hire someone competent who would blend in with the style of the blog comments section, seem like a real person, and slip in strong pithy arguments?

The real AstroTurf™ is green, not orange. The real Althouse astrotroll should be offbeat, funny, and smart -- with a memorable pseudonym and some personal details. Up your game if you're getting paid.

IN THE COMMENTS: Paddy O. quotes my questions -- "Wouldn't the campaign hire someone competent who would blend in with the style of the blog comments section, seem like a real person, and slip in strong pithy arguments?" -- and says "You miss Titus, don't you?" Well, let me ask you people:

Do you miss Titus?
	Yes! Whatever that dispute was, I wish he'd come back.
	I'd like him back, but "miss" is going a bit far.
	No! He was off-topic/obscene/a troll/unfunny.
	Who's Titus?
pollcode.com free polls

"Boehner calls bill a 'crap sandwich'..."

But he'll eat it anyway.

"Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan... would have won a third term easily and still could (even though Reagan is dead)."

That's not the first thing that amused me this morning, just the first thing that amused me enough to blog. It's from this Stanley Fish piece about how people don't much like George Bush now, but we'll probably like him when he's not President anymore.

I was previously amused this morning by this collection of commercials from 1986, especially the "Hot Topper," one of those minor and strangely specific countertop appliances of the era, and "I'm ready to... participate." The 80s seemed to be more about sensuously drizzly liquids than the 00s are.

"The RenGen is a psychographic more than a demographic..."

It's the "renaissance generation":

[T]hey are eco-conscious; they take their cues from nature so they are willing to accept products that are flawed but authentic rather than slickly produced and inauthentic.... They want to make a difference. They want to live many lives. They don’t want to be told, "You can’t be an architect and a poet. They are sensualists. Because they are both idealistic and cynical at the same time...

Ha ha. Are they real? They sound scarily like boomers...

About that...

... bracelet.

Tom Brokaw's bizarre idea of what fairness required.

Steve Schmidt and David Axelrod were on "Meet the Press" this morning, and they spewed talking points and evaded the questions asked by Tom Brokaw. Here's the best example of that:

MR. BROKAW: Let me just share with you what The Wall Street Journal had to say about the opening statements of your two candidates at the debate the other night.

"The debate took place amid the backdrop of the financial crisis, and perhaps most disappointing was how neither man seemed to have anything useful to say about it. ... What neither man showed was any real insight about our financial market issues, or any political courage in offering a solution."

Are you going to have to go back and replate [sic] your economic program, Mr. Axelrod, going forward, because of the changed conditions that result--as a result of this bailout program?

MR. AXELROD: Well, first of all, I don't accept the premise of the Journal piece. The fact is that Senator Obama's been warning for a year and a half about this crisis--about the possibility of such a crisis because of the lack of oversight and greed on Wall Street... But the decisions we make are to prioritize, and this is what Senator Obama said that night, are to prioritize the middle class. What was phenomenal about that debate was that in 40 minutes on the economy, Senator McCain never once mentioned the middle class, never talked about the struggles people are going through. We need to create an economic recovery plan that puts at its core the middle class in this country.

MR. SCHMIDT: Well, Tom, you know, this was a debate about national security, about foreign policy. You never heard the word victory from Senator Obama when it came to wars this country's fighting. But we did talk about the middle class.....

Translation: The Wall Street Journal is absolutely right! The candidates have no real insight about our financial market issues and no political courage in offering a solution.

I'm skipping all the other blah blah blah, which you can read at the link. It's about Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, al Qaeda, etc. Then Brokaw ends the interview like this:

MR. BROKAW: In fairness to everybody here, I'm just going to end on one note, and that is that we continue to poll on who's best equipped to be commander in chief, and John McCain continues to lead in that category despite the criticism from Barack Obama by a factor of 53 to 42 percent in our latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

Gentlemen, thank you very much. I wish we could spend the rest of the day talking about these issues. But you're invited back, and I hope you'll make your second appearance right here on MEET THE PRESS.

What? Why was it a matter of "fairness to everybody here" to end the debate with a thudding, unanswered poll result? At the end of a discussion in which both candidates were perfectly well represented by their mouthpieces, Brokaw thought fairness required him to say, essentially, "Well, the American people still think McCain is much better on these questions."

Brokaw began the discussion by saying "We're not going to get into this business about who won and lost the debate." He made a point of not presenting Schmidt and Axelrod with poll numbers on that subject. And none of his other questions were based on polls, nor did Schmidt and Axelrod bring up any polls. So why did Brokaw end like that?

My guess? Inside NBC, they are fretting about criticism that they show favoritism toward Obama, so Brokaw thought it might help to lob out a glaring hunk of McCain favoritism. Sorry! That just looked really weird. Consequently, it reinforced the perception that NBC favors Obama.

UPDATE: I was right!

"The polar bear and the tiger cannot fight."

Freud, from a book of aphorisms that I've been reading, very slowly, for years. Collected and categorized by W.H. Auden (and some other guy). Look, the whole thing is on line here. I love aphorisms. I wish I could blog entirely in aphorisms...

We boil at different degrees... On the heights it is warmer than those in the valley imagine...

"No solution to a problem can be more elegant than the problem itself."

"We are dealing with a very difficult problem. Given the dimensions of the problem, I believe we have done a good job. It includes genuine compromises."

Barney Frank, in praise of the financial bailout deal, spouts some abstract political philosophy. I'm glad they've settled it, if they've settled it, and I hope it works.

But is it true that complicated problems require complicated solutions? Is it true that compromises are the mark of a good plan?

Fashionistas in the rain.

Great slideshow.

What do you do when there's nowhere to step but puddles and your shoes cost $400+?

How can clothing be perceived as beautiful if it ceases to function in the event of the most predictable and trivial misfortune? Or do you think impracticality makes some things more beautiful?

Remember when feminists critiqued fashion as intended to debilitate women? I do. They used to get mad at the evil designers, but now, it's just women themselves, knowingly taking the risks and frequently and comically caught in a jam.