SITEMETER DID CHANGE, but I had the audacity to hope that it would change back. And it did!

MCCAIN VS. OBAMA: Hot or Not? Depends on whether you hire Jill Greenberg as your photographer, I guess . . . .

HMM: 75% of Alaska Democrats Approve Palin’s Job Performance. Gosh, if you read the New York Times reporting on Palin, that’s hard to believe.

A DEMOCRAT SWITCHES TO MCCAIN: “If Democratic women wait for the perfect woman to come along, we will never elect a woman. I will vote for McCain-Palin. I urge other women to do the same. I promise to be the first person knocking on her door if Roe v. Wade or any other legislation that goes against the rights of women is threatened. But in Governor Palin, I find a woman of integrity, who not only talks the talk but walks the walk. I can work with that. I will work with that.”

OKAY, THE ZOMBIE SURVIVAL LIST that I linked earlier is a bit over-the-top. Here are some more realistic disaster preparedness lists. But remember, buying stuff is nice, but you also need skills, and a plan, in advance of bad things happening. Those don’t come from a store. You might consider training through the Red Cross, or CERT.

FABIUS MAXIMUS ON U.S. ATTACKS INTO PAKISTAN. I’m not at all sure these are a good thing, even if Barack Obama does favor the idea. On the other hand, I don’t think they’re an invasion of Pakistan’s “sovereignty,” since the area in question is one in which Pakistan has not exercised sovereignty. Indeed, these areas have been the launching pad for attacks into Afghanistan, and a key attribute of sovereignty is responsibility for preventing such things. So either these areas are only notionally under Pakistan’s sovereignty, and in fact effectively stateless, or Pakistan is turning a blind eye to Taliban and Al Qaeda activities that it could stop if it wanted. Either way, though cross-border attacks may turn out to be unwise, I don’t think the sovereignty argument adds much.

SARAH PALIN: Cult Killer?

RASMUSSEN: “The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows John McCain reaching the 50% level of support for the first time since Barack Obama wrapped up the Democratic Presidential Nomination. McCain retains a three-point advantage for the third straight day, 50% to 47%.”

LEANING into the wind.

MORE VOTER FRAUD PROBLEMS. I wonder why this doesn’t get more press?

THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE is listing openings and closings in Houston because of Hurricane Ike. And here’s an information page for evacuees planning on returning home.

PLEASE SEND YOUR BEST WISHES to Teresa Nielsen Hayden, who seems to have had a heart attack. Sounds like she’s doing OK; at least there’s an Internet connection in her hospital room.

MORE ON THE ATLANTIC’S PHOTO SCANDAL from Jeffrey Goldberg, who wrote the cover story that has been unfairly, but inevitably, tainted by Jill Greenberg’s duplicitous and unprofessional behavior. “Greenberg is quite obviously an indecent person who should not be working in magazine journalism.”

THE WSJ’S CURRENT HEADLINE: Wall Street Firms Scramble to Avert Crisis.

WHY DOESN’T MCCAIN USE A COMPUTER? Jake Tapper of ABC News:

McCain did once describe himself as computer “illiterate” and dependent upon his wife for computer assistance, but there’s more to the tale than that. Assuredly McCain isn’t comfortable talking about this — and the McCain campaign discouraged me from writing about this — but the reason the aged Arizonan doesn’t use a computer or send email is because of his war wounds.

I realize some of the nastier liberals in the blogosphere will see this as McCain once again “playing the POW card,” but it’s simply a fact: typing on a regular keyboard for any sustained period of time bothers McCain physically. . . .

It’s certainly possible that the Obama campaign did not know this, since McCain makes it sound in interviews as if this is a matter of choice, not discomfort because of his war wounds.

Doesn’t say much for their opposition research, though. And this, frankly, seems outright dishonest: “Obama spokesman Dan Pfeiffer told the Associated Press that the Obama campaign was not trying to invoke McCain’s 72 years. ”

Riiiight. “If there were ever a sign that the Obama camp is in meltdown mode you only had to watch This Week on ABC where top surrogate Sen. Claire McCaskill dredged up John McCain’s age and cancer. So we have gone from New Politics to the political gutter in a matter of weeks.”

WHAT IF Obama were white and McCain were black? “Do readers think it’s correct to assume that in this hypothetical matchup, the Republican candidate’s race would be a significant disadvantage? And would the Democratic candidate likely have been as successful a candidate against Hillary as Obama turned out to be?”

TIGERHAWK: “I seriously doubt that Democrats who count are actually panicking. This spate of stories may well mean that they are already finding their balance. If I were Barack Obama, I would be hoping that the Republicans get cocky right about now. These panic stories are just what the doctor ordered.”

JONAH GOLDBERG: Life of the Party. “The tectonic plates are definitely rumbling. Partisan Democrats may not believe it, but independents and dispirited Republicans now see the McCain-Palin pick as a sharp break with Bush (McCain now has a double-digit lead over the ‘post-partisan’ Obama among independents).” Hmm. They’re not dead yet. In fact, they’re getting better! “I feel happy! I feel happy! . . . I think I’ll go for a walk!”

DR. MELISSA CLOUTHIER: You can be fit and fat. Now if you could just be hot and fat, too, all our problems would be solved . . . .

MORE CHARLES RANGEL SCANDAL. At least now we know how he can afford those really nice suits. I’ve always admired his suits.

THE PROBLEM WITH VIDEOPHONY: “Good old traditional audio-only phone conversations allowed you to presume that the person on the other end was paying complete attention to you while also permitting you not to have to pay anything even close to complete attention to her.”

“POLITICAL PORNOGRAPHY:” Gerard van der Leun, himself a magazine editor of note, comments: “To say Ms. Greenberg’s use of this material in this way is ‘unprofessional’ and does the subject (John McCain) and the client (The Atlantic Monthly) a disservice is to vastly understate the case. Not only has Ms. Greenberg exposed The Atlantic to charges of bias it may well have not intended, it turns out she was engaged in dealing with Senator McCain falsely as well. She has, indeed, bragged about it to PDNPulse, a professional photographers’ journal.”

My sense is that the folks at The Atlantic are pretty unhappy about this, and they should be.

UPDATE: More thoughts from Shannon Love: “The important thing here is not that Greenberg took and altered the pictures. The important thing is that she felt comfortable bragging about what she did! She expected to receive accolades and approval.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Some people are having fun.

THE JAGUAR THAT James Bond wouldn’t drive.

ANNIE OAKLEY IF YOU CAN.

THEY ALWAYS EAT the boy.

UPDATE: But the dog?