Random Babbles: Five

Survivor spoiler alert! Ace's departure was remarkably anti-climactic. Who from that team was going to win though, anyway? It will be one heck of an upset if the final three aren't Marcus, Charlie, and Corinne. Oh, and have I mentioned that it's a travesty that the show wasn't in HD until this year? I was close to drooling over the HD shots of the scenery from the reward.
This masterpiece of an essay from Atlantic.com's Ta-Nehisi Coates discusses the culture of self-victimization among Democrats over the last two elections (NSFW because of an expletive on a photo).
Outside of the stand-by WJFK lineup, I've been working in a bit more NPR and also trying to listen to some left-wing talk radio. The problem is that the lefty stuff is so dry. None of them pull off anger as well as Rush or Beck or Hannity, while the only funny ones are Stephanie Miller (who isn't that funny) and, of course, Rachel Maddow (who's on after I get home).

The famous Drag Race was Tuesday night in the Dupont area of D.C. Here is the Post write-up and it's a funny one, as you'd expect. I've never gone to watch, but I have to do it one of these years.
McCain had two great flubs today. First, he appeared in Defiance, OH, where he called out his buddy Joe The Plumber, only to find out that Joe wasn't actually there. Whoops! Then, the campaign released an ad that has a freaking spelling error in it (13 seconds in)! Yo, J-Mac, you looking kinda unfamiliar right now.

As we get closer and closer, I thought I'd share (with apologies to First Read, Politico, and TPM) the updated list of the Top 5 political sites I visit everday.
5. RealClearPolitics -- They are the gold standard of poll aggregation sites. However, their heavy lean to the right has affected their polling averages.
4. Pollster -- Not only do they have fantastic interactive charts, they also have a blog that digs deep into the numbers. Mark Blumenthal (along with, of course, Nate Silver) is one of my stat geek heroes this year.
3. Marc Ambinder -- Ambinder is well-respected, impartial, and challenging. That makes his stuff all the more worthwhile when so much of the political analysis out there leans one way or the other.
2. The Daily Dish -- Andrew Sullivan has gone off the deep end a bit over Sarah Palin, but he does the best job of pulling together articles from all over the web and putting a mostly rational take on them.
1. FiveThirtyEight.com -- I'm fairly certain that Nate Silver's trackers and maps are burned onto my screen permanently at this point. Also, Sean Quinn's "On The Road" series, as I said last night, is great stuff.

Random Babbles