Michael Moore’s Open Letter to God: Dear God, The other night, James Dobson’s ministry asked all believers to pray for a storm on Thursday night so that the Obama acceptance speech outdoors in Denver would have to be canceled. I see that You have answered Dr. Dobson’s prayers — except the storm You have sent to earth is not over Denver, but on its way to New Orleans! In fact, You have scheduled it to hit Louisiana at exactly the moment that George W. Bush is to deliver his...

As Gustav scrambles the convention, James Joyner raise some good questions: Realistically, the convention can’t be rescheduled. Or, at least, they’re not going to be able to hold anything like the massive, organized convention they otherwise would have between now and the election. It’s just not logistically possible: Even if they could get a space for it, getting enough hotel rooms, booking that many airplane flights, getting the network coverage set up, getting food catered, and so forth...

For anyone who doubts the genius of Obama’s spectacular close to the Democratic National Convention, a few reminders: College Football season begins this weekend. The SuperBowl is the most watched event on television. SuperBowl halftime shows are an anticipated highlight. Obama, bringing the convention out into the Mile High stadium, had the audacity to turn a political convention into the SuperBowl. Politics, you’ll remember, in the Founding Fathers’ era — a time before professional...

Bill Beutler writes to fill in some of the blanks I left yesterday on what makes C-SPAN’s Convention Hub particularly interesting and unique: C-SPAN is putting a spotlight not just on national bloggers, but on state-based bloggers, which never make Memeorandum — delegates, credentialed and uncredentialed bloggers. And we’re working in shifts 18 hours a day (6a-12a). The point is to not just “cover the coverage,” but cover what happens in between. We like to say, the...

I was disappointed to find that The Daily Show was not back last night; tonight’s the night. Jon Stewart’s in Denver for Indecision 2008 convention coverage. He spoke there yesterday at a breakfast with reporters. Howard Kurtz was there: Jon Stewart ripped the cable news networks Monday as a “brutish, slow-witted beast” and castigated Fox News in particular as “an appendage of the Republican Party.” Wearing a gray T-shirt, khaki pants and a healthy stubble, the...

Sarah Lai Stirland at Wired’s Threat Level, reporting on tech Gadgetry at The Democratic National Convention: It’s not only C-Span and the television networks that will cover the convention this year. Bloggers, video-loggers, and even party delegates themselves are promising to provide their take on the events at the Democratic National Convention. This could be the most blogged, v-logged, and photographed convention in the nation’s history. Even C-Span, the square, lumbering public...

If I were to quote just one passage from the NY Times Sunday Magazine piece, Obamanomics, it would be this: There have now been two presidents in the last 30 years — Bush and Reagan — who cut taxes and promised that deficits would not follow. But the deficits did come, and they went away only after two other presidents — George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton — raised taxes. It also seems fairly clear by now that tax cuts for the affluent do not necessarily trickle down to everyone else. For...

UPDATE: Turns out I should have seen it coming. He foretold his comments last night in the Democrats’ glass ceiling at The Weekly Standard. . Steve Benen, “The transparently shameless stunt here is for far-right Republicans to incite as much intra-party tensions among Democrats as humanly possible…  I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if these tactics have the opposite of the intended effect.” Ezra Klein, “I wandered over to the masthead of his magazine…...

CBS Sunday Morning, with its long and thoughtful pieces, is the best of the Sunday lineup; one of the best news shows on TV. Last Sunday they looked at A Post American World: With The Rise Of China And Other Economies, The “Golden Age” Of American Influence May Be Coming To An End. RELATED: Podcasts of Paul Kennedy on The Nuts and Bolts of Empire and Measuring American Power in Today`s Fractured World: [@49:24] The power balances as between national units in this decade have been moving...

Last week Jack Shafer asked, why doesn’t the press boycott the Democratic and Republican conventions? Unless a brokered convention threatens to break out, these political gatherings tend to produce very little real news. Yet the networks, the newspapers, the magazines, and the Web sites continue to insist on sending battalions of reporters to sift for itsy specks of information. According to Forbes, 15,000 pressies are expected to attend each of the conventions. Slate, I’m embarrassed...

Joe Biden just said at his Springfield introduction: It’s great to be here on the steps of the old statehouse in the land of Lincoln. President Lincoln once instructed us to be sure to put your feet in the right place then stand firm. Today in Springfield I know my feet are in the right place. It’s said that Biden and Obama are not personally close. This week Fresh Air replayed a 2005 interview with Doris Kearns Goodwin in which they discussed her book, Team of Rivals. In it, Kearns writes: “In...

Where I live, the southern drawl can be so thick that I can’t make out what is being said. It’s part of what I like about the place. In 28 years in NYC I never picked up an accent. There is no Manhattan accent. (Try telling that to a southerner!) Recently Megan McArdle wondered: It’s odd that an entire American accent disappeared virtually overnight: the upper class American accent that covered not only the northeastern seaboard, but California as well. Some of my friends parents...

Via Amanda Marcotte, “That Feist song still makes me want to scrape my brain out with an icepick.” Slate’s John Dickerson on Hitting Him Where He Lives.

Cultural anthropologist John L. Jackson Jr., a Brainstorm blogger and author of three scholarly books on race issues, chose Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness for his first non-academic book. It’s reviewed today in The Philadelphia Inquirer: Jackson…says African Americans live with the suspicion that they encounter racism constantly in their daily lives – though they can’t always prove it. [...] Jackson insists that racial paranoia is more...

Nearly $1 million in private funds was paid out to 1,161 New York City students yesterday for scoring well on Advanced Placement exams. Still, the number who passed declined slightly: Students involved in the program, financed with $2 million in private donations and aimed at closing a racial gap in Advanced Placement results, posted more 5’s, the highest possible score. That rise, however, was overshadowed by a decline in the number of 4’s and 3’s. Three is the minimum passing score. [...] The...

With school starting up again, so comes a long list of college presidents calling for a new drinking age debate: The movement called the Amethyst Initiative began quietly recruiting presidents more than a year ago to provoke national debate about the drinking age. Bloggers are more than happy to oblige. Atrios says let them drink, then adds a proposal of his own: Perhaps they should consider my cunning plan to let 18 year olds have a drinking license or a driver’s license but not both, which...

Gmail has some new security features. Hacking Truths tells us it’s time to use them: A tool that automatically steals IDs of non-encrypted sessions and breaks into Google Mail accounts has been presented at the Defcon hackers’ conference in Las Vegas. Last week Google introduced a new feature in Gmail that allows users to permanently switch on SSL and use it for every action involving Gmail, and not only, authentication. Users who did not turn it on now have a serious reason to do so as Mike...

Amid all our talk about VP picks, look what just popped up in my inbox: Dear Caroline, We’ve never met, so I hope you don’t find this letter too presumptuous or inappropriate. As its contents involve the public’s business, I am sending this to you via the public on the Internet. I knew your brother John. He was a great guy, and I know he would’ve had a ball during this thrilling and historic election year. We all miss him dearly. Barack Obama selected you to head up his search...

The New York University economics professor predicting a continuing crisis in the U.S. economy: For months Roubini has been arguing that the true cost of the housing crisis will not be a mere $300 billion — the amount allowed for by the housing legislation sponsored by Representative Barney Frank and Senator Christopher Dodd — but something between a trillion and a trillion and a half dollars. But most important, in Roubini’s opinion, is to realize that the problem is deeper than the housing...

One of 10 Futuristic User Interfaces discussed at Smashing Magazine.

Can High Schools enforce dress codes? Or do dress codes violate the teenage students’ free speech rights? Let’s consider the following two cases… David Shraub points to the case of the Knoxville, TN, area teen suspended for wearing the Confederate flag: “This case is about much more than Tom Defoe.” That statement by Defoe’s attorney Wednesday was the one thing on which he and his courtroom opponent agree in the legal battle over the Anderson County school system’s...

Deaths of people in cars, trucks, on bicycles, and on foot are down to historic lows. Motorcycle deaths, on the other hand, were up for the 10th year in a row in 2007. Why? One reason is a decline in the number of states requiring the use of helmets. According to the National Transportation Safety Board, in 1975, 47 states required all motorcycle riders to wear helmets, but now only 20 do. [...] “We are the only industrialized country in the world where there is an organized effort to weaken or...

While I was focused on the gay part of the comment, the base was getting all riled up about the hint of pro-life tolerance. Politico: “It absolutely floored me,” said Phil Burress, head of the Ohio-based Citizens for Community Values. “It would doom him in Ohio.” Burress e-mailed about a dozen “pro-family leaders” he knows outside Ohio and forwarded it to three McCain aides tasked with Christian conservative outreach. “That choice will end his bid for the presidency and spell defeat...

Ars Technica: Today marks 10 years since the release of the iconic iMac. Introduced to the public in May of 1998 and available on August 15, 1998, Apple’s friendly all-in-one has undergone many changes over the last 10 years in order to stay current. Although the iMac wasn’t Apple’s first or only all-in-one machine, it was—and remains—the most popular by far, and remains a symbol of Steve Jobs’ lasting impact on Apple. Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 after a 12-year hiatus...

In a Daily Standard exclusive interview, John McCain explains that he could choose a pro-choice running mate but not one who is pro-gay: “I think it’s a fundamental tenet of our party to be pro-life but that does not mean we exclude people from our party that are pro-choice. We just have a–albeit strong–but just it’s a disagreement. And I think [Tom] Ridge is a great example of that. Far moreso than Bloomberg, because Bloomberg is pro-gay rights, pro, you know, a number...