Last week, I premiered my new Friday Night Odds & Ends series. I will use this forum to round up some news items that you may have missed this week as well as some pop culture tidbits for your enjoyment.
One of my favorite things at Daily Kos is the comment section. Some of the topics I discuss below may have originated in a comment I made in another diary but didn't deserve a diary on it's own. So please don't be shy and feel free to post other items you came across during the week that you think deserved more attention.
Whoever made this is my hero:
The big news this week has mostly involved discussion of the Auto Bailout and whether or not the Big Three deserve $25 billion after making poor decisions. Here is a great video of one of "the good Republicans," Arnold Schwarzenegger making some sense about what they need to do to get back on track:
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In Lieberman news, some Obama campaign aides have come forward and said that joe Lieberman would have helped McCain more than Sarah Palin if he had been chosen as VP nominee. That's a tough one.
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Jason Zengerle over The New Republic has an article about John Edwards and how he can redeem himself in the wake of the scandal that made him a pariah:
If eliminating poverty is truly "the central cause" of Edwards's life--as he's told me and countless other reporters, and as he told the Indiana students earlier this week--then there are plenty of ways he can act on that cause. He could return to UNC's Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity that he helped start in the years after his 2004 presidential bid--and which he promptly left once he embarked on his 2008 campaign. He could restart the non-profit Center for Promise and Opportunity, which he set up after his '04 defeat and which helped with post-Katrina relief work in New Orleans (among other things)--and which he then shuttered during the '08 campaign. Or he could just reactivate his College for Everyone Program, which he founded after his '04 defeat to give college scholarships to graduating high school students in an impoverished county in eastern North Carolina--a program he said would serve as a national model--but which he promptly abandoned after he lost the '08 race. Or he could even do something new--like putting his weight behind the creation of the SouthEast Crescent Authority, which would be modeled after the Appalachian Regional Commission and which would do a helluva lot more to end poverty in North Carolina (and, eventually, elsewhere) than debating Rove in San Francisco and speaking to college students in Indiana.
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As will be the tradition in this series, here is today's always awesome Get Your War On episode:
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In international news, I found it incredible that Iraq is looking to improve it's infrastructure by building a subway in Baghdad.
The subway is the first in Baghdad and will have two lines.
One would run 11 miles from Shiite-dominated Sadr City in the east to the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah in northern Baghdad.
The second line would be cover 13 miles and link the mixed neighborhoods of central Baghdad to the primarily Sunni western suburbs. Both lines will have 20 stations.
Let's hope they make it secure. They last thing that country needs is adding daily subway bombings to the already much too common car bombings.
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A ceremony at the Kennedy Center honoring the late George Carlin, FAILED by censoring a video of Carlin to the point of ridiculousness:
People who attended the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor ceremony this week, however, got a bleepin' earful when a clip was shown of Carlin, the night's posthumous honoree, doing the "Seven Words" routine. But in place of the those words -- which Carlin famously described as the ones that will "infect your soul, curve your spine and lose the war for the Allies" -- came . . . bleeps. Lots and lots of bleeps -- a veritable censorious symphony of them.
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Over at Slate, there's a nice (and humorous) case made for why President Obama should be allowed to keep his BlackBerry.
If you missed the GREATEST YOUTUBE VIDEO OF THE WEEK, here it is:
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It's likely you're a fan of Nate Silver, this election season's poll guru. If so, you might be excited to know that he's looking to expand beyond the internet into the 3rd dimension with a book deal!
According to someone who saw the proposal, Mr. Silver is looking to write two books. The first is a Freakonomics-style guide to politics that answers questions like "Is there really a Bradley Effect?" while the second is on the art of prediction, a book that will draw on interviews with people who have to predict things for a living. In his proposal, Mr. Silver spent two pages describing each book.
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And finally, some music:
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And with that, let's get the weekend started! Who's got the booze?