Midweek links ('cause it's been a while!)

• Oh, August, why have you retreated from your former glory to become just a suburb of September?

• Duh!

• Take back the beep!

• Your "religion" for the week: The Story of Suzie

• The top ten notorious American biker gangs

• On food and being fat... America's food crisis and how to fix it... will exercise make you thin? And finally, ewwww.

• GOP attacks Obama for not being bipartisan enough

• Quote of the week: "Giving up on the public option might be expedient. But we didn't elect Obama to be an expedient president. We elected him to be a great one." -- Eugene Robinson

• And the inevitable more on health care: Oh, no! Not those healthy Canadians again!! ... How American Health Care Killed My Father... Heal or No Heal... David Sedaris weighs in (France vs. the US)... Do the Democrats lack passion?... and Barrel Fever (the slippery slope: "It's about tyrrany. If Obama and Congress can pass health care reform, what's to stop them from coming in to my home, killing my family and taking all my guns?!?")

Things to ponder

As this election finally starts circling the drain, here are some things to consider:

Your personal finances and what the two candidates are threatening to do to them. You can check your tax situation using the widget at right, but don't forget to consider what will happen to your insurance as well.

Thoughts on undecided voters from David Sedaris and Mark Morford.

Some thoughts from one of the most irrelevant, least important voters in this election, an un-American, and a failed American.

Dog Whistles.

This is a pretty cool toy: google in quotes helps you figure out what the candidates have said on the issues.

Get your Jon Stewart fix: WTP?

And finally:

A Little Fun for the Holiday Weekend

Et tu, NPR?

Has everyone gone completely off their rockers? The democrats are thinking of abandoning women and their right to control their own bodies, people are trying to redefine marriage as an institution that's sole purpose is to produce children (does this mean that Bob and Elizabeth Dole will have their marriage license revoked?), Bush is renominiating judges who have already been rejected, and now this from NPR:

National Public Radio, the last bastion of the so-called liberal media, former ground zero of liberal commentary on the airwaves, and target of wingnut abuse for more than thirty years, has finally caved and gone to the dark side. The "moral values" voters, and perhaps Michael Powell, have invaded NPR's Mass Ave offices and have censored a Christmas classic - David Sedaris reading from his Santaland Diaries which describes a month Sedaris spent as a Christmas elf for Macy's.

That's bad enough, right? But there's more.

When Santaland Diaries was first aired 12 years ago, it was more than a little daring because of its description of a flirtation with Snowball, another male elf.

That's right. They've been airing this for twelve years. What was kosher in 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, and in 2003 is now too much for our tender ears. And the offending exerpt? Brace yourselves!

The overall cutest elf is a fellow from Queens named Snowball. Snowball tends to ham it up with the children, sometime literally tumbling down the path to Santa's house. I tend to frown on that sort of behavior but Snowball is hands down adorable -- you want to put him in your pocket. Yesterday we worked together as Santa Elves and I became excited when he started saying things like, "I'd follow you to Santa's house any day, Crumpet!"

It made me dizzy, this flirtation.

By mid-afternoon I was running into walls. At the end of our shift we were in the bathroom, changing clothes, when suddenly we were surrounded by three Santas and five other elves -- all of them were guys that Snowball was flirting with.

Snowball just leads elves on, elves and Santas. He is playing a dangerous game.

I fear for America in 2005.

Sedaris!!!

He's in the New Yorker this month!

At such times you have to wonder how things got to this point. You meet someone and fall in love, then thirteen years later you're lying on the floor in a foreign country, promising, hoping, as a matter of principle, that you'll be dead by sunrise.

Read the whole thing here (thanks to OneGoodMove for the headsup).