Of A Saturday Morning Before 9 AM (!)

• Vagabond Scholar (Batocchio) on the "civility vs. honesty" cage match.  And why honesty must win, or we're all in trouble.  (Via skippy.)
  

  In today's political landscape, clutching one's pearls and bemoaning the lack of "bipartisanship" is like praying for less arson while voting to defund firefighters. Or praying for less crime while voting to defund cops and after-school programs. Or praying for better education while firing teachers to balance the budget and attacking the teachers that remain as lazy, incompetent, overpaid slackers. (Oh, wait, the last one especially is actually happening. Funny, that.) The biggest problem in American politics is not a lack of "bipartisanship" – it's the preponderance of bullshit. It's that low-information and middle-information voters, and the entire corporate media empire that caters to them, cannot and will not call out extremism and irresponsibility.[Emphasis added.]

• I linked to this on the other side, but Daisy's also put it up: The Whedon "endorsement" of Zomney.
• Business Week's reaction to Sandy.  Via Southern Beale.
• Roger Ebert on his occasional forays into political writing and some reactions to that.
• Jesse Curtis endorses Obama with reservations.
  

  Now here's where the movie I've been watching is even more different: I voted for John McCain in 2008. And as Obama's presidency began I had a favorable view of the Republican Party. These past four years have been my political education, as I graduated college and started to follow the news closely. I was shocked by what I saw, especially last summer. I had not imagined that a political party could be as reckless and unpatriotic as the Republicans in congress have been these past four years. While I acknowledge a significant evolution in my views, it is important to note the extent to which I retain many of my traditional beliefs but have been revolted by the extremism of the Republican Party. And that has made me appreciate President Obama's calm, pragmatic governance all the more. I detest radicalism, and that fact points pretty clearly to voting for Obama on Tuesday.

• Let's talk about income inequality and watch conservative punditti squirm.
  

  And his demand, that people who discuss inequality go after root causes and tie those to specific outcomes, is a deliberate effort to muddy debate. Cowen can’t pretend not to know that inequality is the result of numerous causes, including tax, education and employment policies, and social safety nets. And it’s not hard to notice how he makes a not very subtle appeal to prejudice, with his evocation of angry poor urban people (those brown and black underclass types!) as problems in and of themselves.

  Naked Capitalism. Because it's about the money.