I’ve made a bit more progress on the gazebo recently. More than I’ve had time to post on this blog.

Today I started the second trellis. But not before measuring across from the top of the first trellis to check the level. I was then able to mark out 1′ spaces on the middle post of the second trellis with the confidence that my trellises would be level with each other.

In finally got started on my gazebo this week. Our roof and fence had to be replaced post-Hurricane Gustav. With those things finished I felt like I could work on the gazebo without worrying about a bunch of people walking through my backyard.

The ten foot posts I have look pretty tall once you put them upright. I may cut about a foot off.

I wasn’t sure if this post was going to stand on it’s own, but it’s been up for four days now. A couple of braces did the trick. More posts coming soon!

Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.

Channeling his inner Queen of Hearts, John McCain furiously, and apparently without even looking around at facts, said Chris Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, should be decapitated.

[…]

McCain’s smear — that Cox “betrayed the public’s trust” — is a harbinger of a McCain presidency. For McCain, politics is always operatic, pitting people who agree with him against those who are “corrupt” or “betray the public’s trust,” two categories that seem to be exhaustive — there are no other people.

Will’s observation was on vivid display today, as John McCain suddenly suspended his campaign and asked for a postponement of Friday’s presidential debate, saying he needed to be in Washington at this time of crisis.  Maybe I’m cynical, but I don’t think anyone in Washington working on the financial industry bailout plan was saying “if only John McCain and Barack Obama were helping us, everything would be OK.”

Jesse Walker at Reason.com summed up McCain’s gambit thusly:

I’d rather debate pressing issues behind closed doors with my colleagues than on national TV where voters might see me.

McCain has had a rough week.  Obama is up in the polls and meddling reporters keep trying to ask his running mate questions.  It’s understandable that he might want to take on the mantle of the burdened leader, suspending his campaign for the good of the country.  But is it a good campaign strategy?  I think Barney Frank put it well:

“It’s the longest Hail Mary pass in the history of either football or Marys.”

Less than a week after balking at the Alaska Legislature’s investigation into her alleged abuse of power, Gov. Sarah Palin on Monday indicated she will cooperate with a separate probe run by people she can fire.

Putnam Investments has closed a $12.3 billion money-market fund to limit losses to its investors, the large mutual fund company said today. The highly unusual announcement is the latest sign that tremendous financial pressures are now threatening even some of the safest kinds of investments.

The Prime Money Market Fund was open only to institutional investors. Putnam said in a statement that its board decided to close the fund last night after receiving a large number of redemption requests. The company said it could honor those requests only by selling assets at a loss, reducing the value of the remaining shares.

Putnam said it decided instead to liquidate the fund and spread any losses evenly among all the investors. “We wanted to treat all shareholders equally,” said spokeswoman Laura McNamara. She said it was “premature” to discuss how much of a loss, if any, shareholders will incur.

I try to keep this blog clean, so I’m not going to type anymore right now.

Obama poked fun of McCain and Palin’s new “change” mantra.

“You can put lipstick on a pig,” he said as the crowd cheered. “It’s still a pig.”

“You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It’s still gonna stink.”

“We’ve had enough of the same old thing.”

Playing the hurt feelings card, Jane Swift, the head of the McCain campaign’s “Palin Truth Squad”, had this response:

Speaking on behalf of the McCain campaign, former Massachusetts Gov. Jane Swift tonight flatly stated that Obama had called Palin a pig.

“[T]he formation of the Palin Truth Squad couldn’t have happened too soon, as we saw when Sen. Obama in Lebanon, Va., this evening uttered what I can only deem to be disgraceful comments comparing our vice presidential nominee Gov. Palin to a pig,” Swift said.

“Sen. Obama owes Gov. Palin an apology,” she said.

Later she would suggest that Obama had called McCain a stinky fish.  Seriously.

It sounds to me like Swift said something really dumb, realized it, but didn’t want to reverse herself.  So she tried to rationalize it, to make it sound not-so-dumb:

When one reporter asked Swift why she assumed the remarks were directed at Palin, Swift replied: “It seemed to me a gendered comment. There’s only one woman in the race.”

“As far as I know, she’s the only one of the four — the presidential and vice presidential candidates — who wears lipstick,” Swift said.

But like I always say, you can’t polish a turd.  (No, I’m not calling Jane Swift a turd.)

That 75,000 number reminds me: why are Republicans trying to use his appeal against him?  I guess its that Rove tactic where you attack your opponent’s greatest strengths.  But really, why is it a point of pride for McCain that he can’t draw a crowd remotely that size?

And what a great call by his campaign to open up the convention and have this event in a stadium.  When the cameras panned the crowd, instead of Democratic conventioneers, you saw an incredible cross-section of Americans.  And considering some of the conventioneers I saw in the television coverage earlier this week, I think that was a wise move.

Finally, I thought the bio video that they played before his speech was nice, but it left out what had to be a hugely influential moment of his life: