Misc.

* Batman and D&D alignment. I think "chaotic evil"'s a bit of a stretch. Via Neilalien.

* Lesbians have seized control of the world's supply of poems. It is appropriate to panic.

* Star Trek as liberal fantasy: 1, 2, 3. I'm planning on seeing it tomorrow, I'll have more to say then. (Image via Matt Yglesias.)

* Wire creator David Simon testifies before Congress on the death of newspapers.

Monday tidbits.

* Early polls out of the Senate race in Pennsylvania, post Specter-shuffle.

* An end to the Boston Globe? (UPDATE: No?)

* Bibles and scripts from your favorite TV shows: 1, 2. (Via Zack.)

* Condition your child the Darrow way. (Via Neil.)

Thoughts on the newspaper apocalypse from Wire creator David Simon.

"Oh, to be a state or local official in America over the next 10 to 15 years, before somebody figures out the business model," says Simon, a former crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun. "To gambol freely across the wastelands of an American city, as a local politician! It's got to be one of the great dreams in the history of American corruption."

Like it or not—and Simon doesn't just dislike it, he thinks it can't work—this is what blogs are for now.

Misc.

* NYC's maple-syrup smell mystery resolved! It was New Jersey. (Really!)

* The AP lacks a basic understanding of fair use. More at MeFi.

* Raccoons have invaded the White House. Sadly the Secret Service has only trained for nighttime raccoon assault.

* How Obama is screwing up the stimulus: failure to counteract zombie Republican lies. More on this from Steve Benen.

* Also on the Obama-screwing-up front: he's publishing op-eds in dead-tree media. Nobody reads newspapers anymore, gramps!

* Though they do, apparently, read alt-weeklies.

* Also: Judd Gregg still sucks.

* Climate Progress now has one-stop anti-nuclear shopping.

* The nonprofit industrial complex.

* How various songs react to Ze Frank's voice-activated drawing applications.

* And via Kottke: Who wouldn't want to take a class entitled "What's So Great about The Wire?"?

McCain's "barnstorming" Pennsylvania today, giving credence to yesterday's reports that he's going "all in" on PA. Meanwhile, Barack Obama is officially the president of newspaper endorsements, lots of people are early voting and most of them are Democrats, a before-and-after debate poll shows McCain hemorrhaging support, and Democrats are still looking unbelievably strong in North Carolina. Happy days are here again.

Barack Obama has attracted the support of nearly three times as many newspapers as John McCain, according to a round-up from Editor and Publisher, as the endorsement season hits a frenzied pitch.

Obama picked up the backing of several major dailies on Friday, including the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune, which has never endorsed a Democratic nominee for president.

In 2004, these numbers were much closer, roughly 50-50, due to the high prevalence of right-leaning local papers.

Along the same lines, Matt is surprised by the number of Kay Hagan endorsements.

The big endorsement right now, though, looks to be Colin Powell's, who is again rumored to be making a bid to restore his reputation by endorsing Obama this weekend on Meet the Press.

Brave New Films has a three-and-a-half-minute compendium of McCain's most major lies. It's a message that's long been seen on the blogs, but is finally taking hold in the mainstream media; a Daily Kos diary compiles "McCain is lying" stories from the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Seattle Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Post, the Times again, and the Dallas Morning News. (If only people still read newspapers!)

Rope-a-dope or just plain lucky, the Obama campaign has begun to speak on this:

“We will take no lectures from John McCain who is cynically running the sleaziest and least honorable campaign in modern Presidential campaign history. His discredited ads with disgusting lies are running all over the country today. He runs a campaign not worthy of the office he is seeking,” said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

Good. Every surrogate should be saying this, and no Democratic surrogates should be praising McCain's integrity, personal courage, or fundamental decency. Not anymore. Not after the McCain campaign all has but admitted that it doesn't give a damn about the truth:

“We recognize it’s not going to be 2000 again,” McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said, alluding to the media’s swooning coverage of McCain’s ill-fated crusade against then-Gov. George W. Bush and the GOP establishment. “But he lost then. We’re running a campaign to win. And we’re not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it.”

That means you, too, Joe Biden.

That means you, too, Barack Obama.

I expect the basic, inescapable dishonesty of the McCain campaign to be a major issue both in the coming week and at the first presidential debate on September 26. Even the media has caught on to the fact that McCain/Palin hasn't said a single true thing in weeks. When you've lost The View, you've lost America.