Media-Whore D'Oevres

"There has been movement in the polls, a well-received debate performance, energy in his crowds, a spate of 'Resurgent McCain' stories in the news. 'I’m enjoying it more these days,' he said, compared with his front-runner days. 'For whatever reason, it took me a while to hit my stride.' It also cost him a lot of money. 'I just have to be who I am,' he said. 'It seems to me, if you’re not going to enjoy it, it can be difficult. So I want to enjoy it.'" (NYTimes)

"The smile on her face tells one story, but her legs tell a much different story. First of all, Jessica (Simpson) could have opted to wear pants to avoid this whole debacle--and by debacle, I'm referring to this blog post, of course--which, quite frankly, it looks to me like she should be wearing, mysterious bruises or not. Barring the fact that she looks so ridiculous in such a short blouse, it almost as if she's decided to showcase her strange bruises that are either the result of being beaten for refusing to wipe that ridiculous and inexplicable smile off her face, or if it's simply the result of some uneven tanning."(Socialitelife)

"In an interview with tomorrow's Andrew Marr programme, clips from which were released tonight by the BBC, (UK Prime Minister Gordon) Brown insisted that he would press ahead with governing the country and ruled out an election before 2009. 'Yes, we could have had an election on competence,' he said. 'But I want to show people our vision for this country. I want the chance to develop and show the policies that will make the difference.'The Observer can reveal that he decided to act after Labour's private polls showed a severe drop in the party's support in key marginal constituencies after the Tories pledged to exempt properties worth less than £1m from inheritance tax. The findings are confirmed in a News of the World opinion poll today, which found that the pledge by the shadow Chancellor, George Osborne, is so popular that Labour is on course to lose its parliamentary majority." (Guardian)

"NYC's Hammerstein Ballroom was brimming with celebrities last night for VH1's 2007 Hip Hop Honors. Tracy Morgan (who was so the highlight of last night's 30 Rock — "You can be a freaky deaky and do data entry.") hosted the event, which probably is a good reason for it not to air live. He's a tad unpredictable. The ladies shined on the red carpet, especially Kerry Washington in her strapless blue number." (Fetchbyspa)

"The new policy advocated by seventy-five senators is decentralized federalism or soft partition, depending on who’s describing it. The non-binding resolution was introduced by Joe Biden, of Delaware, the longtime senator and long-shot Presidential candidate, who has consistently been the most thoughtful elected official in Washington on the subject of Iraq. (I wrote about him back in 2004.) Biden’s proposal originated with Leslie Gelb, of the Council on Foreign Relations, almost four years ago, in a Times Op-Ed that called for a 'three-state solution' to Iraq’s political problems. Biden joined Gelb on the Op-Ed page last year; by then, Gelb’s three states had become “three largely autonomous regions with a viable central government in Baghdad,” an arrangement permitted by Iraq’s new constitution. Baghdad, a “federal zone,” would be responsible for national defense, foreign relations, and the equal distribution of oil money; the regions would handle just about everything else. The model would be Bosnia after the Dayton accords." (TheNewYorker)