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A flock of titmice came to the bird feeder and with them was a red-breasted nuthatch.  The pretty little nuthatch wasn't interested in the seeds, so it preened itself while the others squabbled over feeder dowels and chattered with the chickadees.

A phoebe perched upon a naked maple branch, flicking its tail.  I thought she'd have left, trailing behind the swallows.  But the insects are still flying, and maybe she's had a premonition that winter is not coming.

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The first Presidential debate seemed destined to take the wind out of progressives' sails.  The Obama that showed up was the centrist, bureaucratic Obama - the one who often seems content to take Republican policies and re-shape them to do the least harm.  The Obama who seems reluctant to call out the current Republican project for the cynical deception that it is.

I'll vote for Obama, because although I don't think Obama's centrist complacency is up to the task of solving many of our problems, Romney's backers, given the chance, will turn us all into serfs.

UPDATE:  I'm not going to spend much time reading the debate post-mortems, but I think Grist's David Roberts gets it about right.

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