Dailies

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/13143.html

Roger Simon hits the nail on the head, here.

ST. PAUL, Minn. — On behalf of the media, I would like to say we are sorry.

On behalf of the elite media, I would like to say we are very sorry.

We have asked questions this week that we should never have asked.

We have asked pathetic questions like: Who is Sarah Palin? What is her record? Where does she stand on the issues? And is she is qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency?

We have asked mean questions like: How well did John McCain know her before he selected her? How well did his campaign vet her? And was she his first choice?

Bad questions. Bad media. Bad.

It is not our job to ask questions. Or it shouldn’t be. To hear from the pols at the Republican National Convention this week, our job is to endorse and support the decisions of the pols.

…

'There's no better job' than journalism: Garcia Marquez

MEXICO CITY (AFP) — Colombian writer and Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez hailed journalism as the best profession, in rare public comments in northern Mexico.

"There's no better job" than journalism, said the 81-year-old author of 'One Hundred Years of Solitude,' who started out as a journalist and often says he writes to avoid having to speak.

…

I'm road-tripping out to the Democratic convention in Denver, blogging and shooting pictures along the way. Our updates are at http://www.billiondollarpresident.org/

As a kid, I spent a lot of years in constant motion between my divorced parents' houses. I was never particularly good at keeping track of belongings — maybe because I had twice as many places any single object could be? — and for whatever reason, a recurring bad-dream theme was losing small, personal things. A watch. My contact lenses. A bracelet. None of them particularly important or irreplaceable, but knowing that it was something I'd handled just days earlier and now couldn't find bothered the crap out of me.

Still does.

When I go on big cleaning rampages, I frequently re-organize things and in so doing, mess up my mental picture of where things are. For the last week, I haven't been able to put my hands on my ProTools install CD. Haven't really needed it, but couldn't find it. Knew that I'd handled it recently. Knew that it and the serial number on the back of it was worth money. Knew it was very likely within six feet of my desk, but I Just. Couldn't. Find. It.

Just found it. Whew.

Now if I could just find my damn bluetooth earpiece.

Two weeks away: one week in San Francisco, one in Hawai'i. Left New York City during a horrendous heat wave, which made the whole trip feel like we were pleasurably on the lam. In every respect I can think of, the trip was a phenomenal success, although sprinting back from Hawai'i (GMT -11:00) to San Francisco (GMT -8:00) to New York (GMT -5:00) in 36 hours meant we lay awake in our bed last night, staring at the ceiling. This morning, thanks to jetlag, we awoke with our heads on backwards and inside out. We should have staggered our return a little bit more, methinks.

A more detailed writeup to come.