Interesting links for September 2008.

• McCain Approves Open – A video clip from an opening of Saturday Night Live this season. You can laugh if you don’t cry.
• Security Matters: Airport Pasta-Sauce Interdiction Considered Harmful – Two kinds of things you can’t bring on airplane — and why they should not distinguish between the two. On Wired.
• Gay-lesbian titles donated to Wasilla Library – A San Francisco man has donated two children’s books dealing with homosexuality to the Wasilla Library. (Take that, Sarah Palin!) Reported in the Wa-Su Valley Frontiersman.
• Breaking: McCain Campaign Suspends Campaign Due To Crisis, Calls On Delay For Debate – John McCain asks for a timeout. I wonder if you can do that when the phone rings with bad news at 3 AM? On Talking Points Memo.
• Letting Sarah Palin Answer Questions Is Very, Very Dangerous – Commentary on the McCain camp’s continued shielding of Sarah Palin from reporter questions. On Talking Points Memo.
• Wait … Wait – “Look at what appears to have happened. Obama reached out to McCain privately to agree to a shared set of bailout principles. McCain went off the handle again and tried to use the crisis as a way to call off the debates.” On Talking Points Memo.
• Ricky Van Veen’s GET EXCITED – After hearing Matt Damon’s brilliant comparison of a Sarah Palin presidency to a bad Disney movie, Ricky Van Veen made a trailer for what that movie would look like. Here it is. Classic.
• Palin On Foreign Policy Video – Katie Couric talks with Gov. Sarah Palin about her foreign policy experience and Alaska’s proximity to Russia. I can’t believe Palin can say stuff like this with a straight face. Unless, of course, she believes it? Video on CBSNews.com
• Chocolate Cake In 5 Minutes! – This sounds excellent. I can’t wait to make it. On Dizzy-Dee.com.
• White House caught napping on financial crisis – Hard-hitting commentary by Campbell Brown on CNN.com.
• David Letterman Reacts to John McCain Suspending Campaign – On the “Late Show,” David Letterman talks about John McCain suspending his campaign in order to solve the economic problems. On YouTube.
• Para Publishing – Free information and resources for non-fiction writers.
• About The Sarah Palin Poll – PBS’s NOW television show has a poll regarding Sarah Palin’s qualifications to be vice president (or president) of the United States. Check this out and voice your opinion.
• 15 Things You Need to Know About the Panic of 2008 – A plain English explanation of what happened, why it happened, and what it means. On Kiplinger.com.
• The Latest Spin – Balloon Juice spells it out for the “morons” (their word, but it does apply) who can’t see what’s going on with the McCain debate postponement ploy.
• David Letterman’s Top Ten Little Known facts about Sarah Palin – As read by residents of Wasilla, AK. In my opinion, he went easy on her.
• Election 2008 | powered by Twitter – Real time tweets containing the candidate names put a finger on the pulse of Twitter users tweeting about the election.
• Letterman keeps up verbal assault on John McCain – McCain pissed off Letterman and now Letterman won’t let him forget it. Letterman’s criticisms continue to question McCain’s motives in canceling his appearance and attempting to postpone the debates.
• McCain Wins Debate – From the ICBTFS department: The McCain camp declares that McCain won the debate — before the debate happened.
• Breaking News Videos from CNN.com: Sarah Palin – In her third TV interview, Gov. Sarah Palin raises eyebrows with some of her comments.
• Palin Talks Russia With Katie Couric (VIDEO) – Another cringe-producing interview with Sarah Palin. This one includes 150+ PAGES of comments.
• McCain and Team Have Many Ties to Gambling Industry – Is John McCain a gambler?
• Electoral Projections Done Right – TPM has the internals of the CNN poll of debate-watchers, which had Obama winning overall by a margin of 51-38. The poll suggests that Obama is opening up a gap on connectedness, while closing a gap on readiness. On FiveThirtyEight.com.
• Poll Results Suggest More Uncommitted Voters Saw Obama As Debate Winner – UPDATED WITH FINAL NUMBERS CBS News and Knowledge Networks conducted a nationally representative poll of approximately 500 uncommitted voters reacting to the debate in the minutes after it happened.
• 20 tips to help you work smarter with OS X – A quick summary of 20 things you can do to work smarter with Mac OS X. On TechRadar UK.
• A Tally of Federal Rescues – A graphic representation of various budget numbers next to the bailout amount. Scary stuff.
• Top 10 Articles About the Financial Crisis – A list of articles with summaries that can help you understand the current financial crisis. On Intellectual Detox.
• Kathleen Parker: After Interviews, Palin Should Bow Out – The Huffington Post takes Parker’s column and runs with it.
• Palin Problem – Conservative journalist Kathleen Parker writes about Sarah Palin: Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League. On National Review Online
• Saturday Night Live: Presidential Debate – More fun from the folks at SNL. On Hulu.com.
• The Great Schlep – Send this to your Jewish friends. ‘Nuff said.
• Palin Is Ready? Please. – Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria is saying what we’re all thinking: how can they possibly say Sarah Palin is ready to be one heartbeat away from the presidency?
• Hive Five: Five Best Sites to Stream TV – This is the ONLY way I get TV these days, since I have neither a television nor a cable/satellite connection here in my camper. I’ve been watching the Daily Show and the Colbert Report on Hulu and I tried The Mentalist on CBS.com the other day.
• TV ad | Hovis – Great advertisement that takes a loaf of bread and the small boy who runs with it through history. Thanks to @MikeTRose for tweeting the link.
• The 50 most significant moments of Internet history – Interesting article about the development of the Internet from its very beginning to today. On Crave at CNET.co.uk.
• BBC – Languages – I don’t know about you, but I’ve been wanting to learn to speak Spanish fluently for years. The BBC Web site has a whole section dedicated to free language lessons: Spansh, French, German, and more. Lot of learning tools, including videos and games. Give it a try.
• Surprising Things You Can Get For Free (Or Almost) – A list in Womans’ Day (of all places) of free or very inexpensive things. Some of them are worth a look.
• Saturday Night Live: Couric / Palin Open – Tina Fey does Sarah Palin again. It’s really amazing. She has the voice and mannerisms down perfectly. And what she says doesn’t seem too far from reality. On Hulu.com.
• McCain takes credit for bill before it loses – Classic: Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and his top aides took credit for building a winning bailout coalition – hours before the vote failed and stocks tanked. By Mike Allen on Politico.com.
• 28 Excellent Free Mac Apps for Graphic and Web designers – Information with screenshots and summaries about free applications of interest to Mac graphics and Web designers. On Speckyboy.com.
• Palin treads carefully between fundamentalist beliefs and public policy – Sarah Palin believes that dinosaurs and humans walked the earth at the same time. Looks like the Republicans found another candidate who doesn’t believe in science. On the LATimes.com.
• Commentary: Bankruptcy, not bailout, is the right answer – An interesting take on a possible solution for the current financial crisis. On CNN.com.
• On the Implausibility of the Death Star’s Trash Compactor – A detailed discussion of this plot contrivance from the original Star Wars.
• David Weinberger: Top 10 Reasons Sarah Palin Cancels the Debate – THIS is funny.
• Latest Palin Gaffe: Can’t Name Supreme Court Case Other Than Roe V. Wade – I don’t understand this. Don’t they realize that you need to know more about the U.S. and world than a 5th Grader to be the vice president?
• Aeronet Bandwidth Speed Test – Yet another bandwidth speed test.
• Dictionary.hm – Excellent Ajax-based dictionary. Type in a word and the definition appears automatically.
• New York City Walk – This photographer walked every single street in Manhattan and took photos along the way. This site has the maps and photos. Good quality stuff.
• Running the Numbers – Photographer Chris Jordan turns cold, hard stats into provocative statements on economics, culture, and the American way of life.
• Concerns About Palin’s Readiness as a Big Test Nears – Reality is apparently FINALLY setting in — even many Palin “fans” can’t deny how unprepared and uninformed she looked in her three interviews. The debate should make things clearer. On NYTimes.com.
• Internet Curmudgeon – Scott McNulty shines a light on the absurdity of “social media consultants” and other modern idiocies. On the BlankBaby blog.