Finishing up Friday

I think I did work in the lab today, for real. And I still left a lot on the plate. But there's more to talk about over the weekend. Such as:

1. I still haven't put together coherent thoughts about Barack getting heckled in St. Petersburg earlier today. But what I've come up with so far isn't all that kind to the good people of the International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement. Not only were those cats off but I'd like to think that issues of the so-called "Black community" are universal concerns - the rising cost of fuel, predatory lenders, repairing our crippled economy, etc. Barack, I must add, handled himself very well on the fly.

2. John McCain claims today in Florida that Obama "clearly played the race card." Sigh. McCain also looked pretty bad when responding to a reporter's question today about factcheck.org's claim that he was lying about Obama's record on taxes. He said, and I quote: "I don't respond to the Web. I have no idea what they're talking about." McCain might want to familiarize himself with this thing called the Internet. It's not a fad.

3. Ta-Nehisi gives a link to an interesting article about the conservative movement and its record on civil rights. I haven't quite read it all yet but Ta-Nehisi makes some important points about the reluctance of black folks to join the Right. Let's make a promise to check this out over the weekend, ok?

4. If research really shows that people must work out for an hour a day to keep weight off, then I'm skeptical as to how Americans will ever truly combat our obesity problem.

5. Football season is upon us. Yes. More on the coaches' Top 25 poll tomorrow.

And I'm out.

UPDATE: I can't forget to send a word of g'luck to one of my favorites, Matthew Yglesias, as he takes his blog from theAtlantic.com to http://www.thinkprogress.org/yglesias. Ta-Nehisi will take Matt's spot at The Atlantic, so fortunately, the blogosphere won't lose either of them.