Dear diary, today I worked.  Oh and with Shirley traveling, I was a kid taxi.  No ride for me today.  Blech.  Tomorrow will be better :!

Would the last honest reporter please turn out the lights?  Worth quoting in detail, because this is telling it like it is (and like you will not hear it from any of the mainstream media): 

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.  What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor - which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house - along with their credit rating.  They end up worse off than before.

Revisiting Scoble's I am not an American rant-response to the I am Joe meme... Instapundit quotes reader Hugh Thorner: "You might be unAmerican if . . . A Vice Presidential candidate schmoozes a crowd by calling them pro-American and you immediately think you're being called un-American."  Heh, indeed. 

So what do you think, will GM and Chrysler merge?  TTAC says GM lacks the investors...  Despite calling this a merger, it would really be GM acquiring Chrysler, and it is hard to see what they get out of it, except perhaps more government handout money.  How the mighty have fallen. 

GOOD EVENING: John Hodgman (aka "PC") blogs on Boing Boing.  Excellent. 

The World Series starts Wednesday, and King Kaufman asks Rays vs. Phillies, Who Cares?  And then proceeds to tell you why you should care, if you're a baseball fan...  (link captured as PDF to dodge Salon's paywall)  I care, I like watching baseball, and I've invented a rooting interest - go Rays! 

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is marvelous; Saturn from Cassini, in all its amazing beauty.  Can you imagine looking out your spacecraft window and seeing that?  For the life list :) 

Apropos my rant when new version suck: John Gruber notes If it ain't broke, don't upgrade it.  "Bob Staake, the artist who still uses Photoshop 3.0:  'When I open up Photoshop 3.0, it’s there and ready to go in four seconds flat, and when I have opened CS2 my fingernails will have grown a quarter inch before the app appears.'"  I know exactly how he feels. 

Robert Cringley speculates on Apple's HD video plans, noting the H.264 hardware support in the new Mac laptops.  Could be...  It would be nice to have 1080p in iTunes, but 1080i seems just fine.  Rumor has it Apple are preparing to launch HD displays with the AppleTV functionality built in - that would be cool... 

Meanwhile Jason Kincaid at Techcrunch thinks Lala may have found the next revolution in music.  They're offering any song "from the cloud" for 10¢.  Hmmm.  And that goes as a credit in case you decide to buy the song and download it, DRM-free.  That actually does sound like a pretty good deal.  Hmmm... 

TRYING IT NOW.  Listening to Styx, Too Much Time on my Hands (another worthy entry in the "best loud song" sweepstakes).  Sounds good.  Cost was 0¢ because they offer fifty songs free.  But I probably would have paid 10¢ to listen to this song, this way, anytime I want...  Hmmm.  Stay tuned :)

[Clarification] Turns out a song only costs 10¢ if you want to "add it to your collection".  You can listen to as many songs as you want, FREE, while figuring out which ones to add to your collection.  This rocks pretty hard.

Finally, Ann Althouse notes some celebrities know how to do the "celebrities in politics thing exactly right"...