What Atrios said. More here.

Mark Sanford's political career is ending at the press conference going on now. It's painful to watch: after an awkward introduction that sung the praises of the Appalachian Trail, he segued into apologies to (so far) his kids, wife, staff, political supporters, parents-in-law, and the people of South Carolina. He hasn't said yet what he's apologizing for, but it's not looking good.

UPDATE: Yeah, he's been cheating on his wife. But that's the B-story—he ran off for a week without telling anybody on his staff what he was doing or where he was going. He's obviously got to resign the governorship. Hopefully the reporters have the sense to ask the right questions here, not just the salacious ones.

UPDATE 2: So far the reporters have stuck entirely to salacious questions about his marriage and his mistress. Well done, fellows. What about the state responsibilities he shirked? Can we get some real questions here?

UPDATE 3: Okay, finally we're getting some real questions about the fact that he lied to his staff about where he was going. (He admits he did.) And it's at that moment he runs off the podium, to audible questions about whether he will resign.

UPDATE 4: The coverage on MSNBC has been amazingly bad. We've had a parade of Republicans and political analysts with deep solemnity praising Sanford's "honesty" and explaining that no one should try to "make political hay" out of this. (Quoted language was obviously in the distributed talking points.) The man was caught at the airport by a reporter after changing his flight plans to try to avoid the press, after lying to his staff and ditching his official responsibilities for no good reason. To turn this into some morality play is soap opera coverage at its absolute worst. The adultery is irrelevant and the "honesty" a joke. It's about the job he was elected to do.

When will we get a real press corps?

UPDATE 5: According to the Kos thread, even Fox is handling this better:

11:55AM: Fox's Bill Sammon just layed down the law, all but saying Mark Sanford was done. Given Sammon's influence over Fox political coverage, that's pretty much a political death sentence even in the land of wingnuttia.

UPDATE 6: Someone at MSNBC must be watching Fox; Tamron Hall just called bullshit on everything MSNBC broadcast over the last hour and did a great job doing it, explicitly downplaying the soap opera in favor of the job issues in the process.

UPDATE 6: And of course Fox hardly deserves full marks.



Another accident! What are the odds? Curse the luck!

The headline reads, "In Tough Times, the Humanities Must Justify Their Worth." And it seems like only yesterday we had to justify our worth in the booming information economy...

Dr. Sanjay Gupta breathes a sigh of relief as Judd Gregg assumes the proud role of "worst Obama administration appointee ever." What a debacle this is.

More details are coming out about the MLA's Job Information list, and none of it is good.

The number of job postings in the MLA’s Job Information List will be down 21 percent in 2008-9, the steepest annual decline in its 34-year history. For English language and literature, the drop will be 22.2 percent and for foreign languages, 19.6 percent. Not all jobs are listed with the MLA, so the figures don’t cover every position, but the MLA’s postings have tracked consistently with national trends, especially for the assistant professor positions that are so desirable to new Ph.D.’s who want to land on the tenure track.

I also accidentally took a look at the subdiscipline statistics, which always depress me. 7.3%? It's our own country's literature! Where's your pride, America?

CNN, the Cable News Network, announced yesterday that it will cut its entire science, technology, and environment news staff, including Miles O’Brien, its chief technology and environment correspondent, as well as six executive producers. Ugh. What idiots. It's not as if science, technology, and environmental reporting is likely to be important anytime soon. Via Kevin Drum.

Last night's Daily Show coverage of Obama's Cabinet appointments nicely demonstrates once again that the Daily Show is the only news program possessed of a VCR, the power of memory, or rudimentary human intelligence.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Team America

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Obama/Clinton Sarcasm

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

The morning news.

* The bailout has cost more than "Marshall Plan, Louisiana Purchase, moonshot, S&L bailout, Korean War, New Deal, Iraq war, Vietnam war, and NASA's lifetime budget -- *combined*!" But think of all we have to show for it!

* Related: Alternet's ten worst corporations of 2008. How did they limit themselves to just ten? Via MeFi.

* Marginal Revolution casts some cold water on wind farms, points (where else?) to nuclear energy instead. Isn't the problem here our poor energy infrastructure? The sort of redesigned, rebuilt grid Obama talks about would make these wind farms much more efficient than just about any other source of power, including, I'm given to understand, solar.

* Because of the downturn, colleges aren't hiring. Ugh.

* Cory Doctorow is looking to change the world.



* Confidential to Mac users: an update for Handbrake has been released.

* And Wendy Whitaker is today's poster child for obscenely stringent sex offender laws: because she had oral sex with a 15.9-year-old boy when she was 17, she's a sex offender for life and is currently being forced to vacate her home because it is too close to a church that runs a daycare service. A judge, unbelievably, just upheld this order. Via MeFi.

Nobody is happy about the terms of the Citi group bailout, which appears to be a simple handover of cash with no strings attached at all. When we give a company $7 billion more than it's actually worth because it's "too big to fail," that shouldn't be giving anymore—that should be buying. Mark Thoma has your link roundup, with more commentary from Matt Yglesias, Paul Krugman, Kevin Drum, and Marginal Revolution. The word of the day, you'll find, is "ugh."

Reports of successful political jujitsu were deeply exaggerated: 'Democrats To Relent On Offshore Drilling Ban.' Idiots.

Are Congressional Democrats really getting ready to cave on offshore drilling, a total non-solution to America's energy crisis? The Wall Street Journal says of course they are. What a bunch of clowns.