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Slate V:

McCain and Palin campaign together in Michigan and Wisconsin.
by E.J. Kalafarski and Chadwick Matlin
5 Sep 2008 at 6:12pm
McCain and Palin campaign together in Michigan and Wisconsin. Biden and Obama are stumping separately in Pennsylvania.

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Abortion, teen motherhood, and parental authority.
by William Saletan
5 Sep 2008 at 4:06pm
Last week, Democrats approved the first black major-party nominee for president. This week, Republicans countered with their first female nominee for vice president. From race to sex to religion, the circle of opportunity is expanding: John F. Kennedy to Joe Lieberman, Jesse Jackson to Barack Obama, Geraldine Ferraro to Sarah Palin. The story of emancipation marches on.

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Why is the Internet so infuriatingly slow?
by Chris Wilson
5 Sep 2008 at 3:45pm
Everyone hates their Internet service provider. And with good cause: In the age of ubiquitous Internet access, Web service in America is still often frustratingly slow. Tired of being the villain, telecom companies have assigned blame for this problem to a new bad guy. He's called the "bandwidth hog," and it's his fault that streaming video on your computer looks more like a slide show than a movie. The major ISPs all tell a similar story: A mere 5 percent of their customers are using around 50 percent of the bandwidth?sometimes more during peak hours. While these "power users" are sharing three-gig movies and playing online games, poor granny is twiddling her thumbs waiting for Ancestry.com to load.

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The devastating impact of 50 years of oil exploitation on the Niger Delta.
by Ed Kashi and Julie Winokur
5 Sep 2008 at 3:43pm
Fifty years ago, oil was discovered in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Today, at 2.1 million barrels per day, Nigeria is the sixth-largest oil-producing country in the world and a major oil partner of the United States.� Although its oil industry generates millions of dollars in revenues daily, the average resident of the Niger Delta struggles to survive on less than $1 per day.

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Corrections from the last week.
5 Sep 2008 at 3:37pm
In the Sept. 2 "Television," Troy Patterson incorrectly stated that Sarah Palin had a family of seven when she made a campaign advertisement in 2006. She had a family of six then.

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Wall Street.
5 Sep 2008 at 3:32pm
Wall Street.

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7 percent problem.
5 Sep 2008 at 3:22pm
7 percent problem.

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Cartoonists' take on Joe Biden.
5 Sep 2008 at 3:19pm
Cartoonists' take on Joe Biden.

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McCain accepts nomination and vows to change Washington.
by Daniel Politi
5 Sep 2008 at 2:28pm
John McCain accepted his party's nomination for president yesterday and portrayed himself as a public servant able to rise above his party and reach out across the aisle to bring about the change in Washington that voters so desperately crave. By talking so much about change, McCain "sought to claim [Barack] Obama's campaign theme as his own," notes USA Today. The Republican nominee pretty much ignored the president and directed his anger "at a perennial target of both parties: nameless faceless obstructionists in Washington," says the Los Angeles Times. "Let me offer an advance warning to the old, big-spending, do-nothing, me-first, country-second Washington crowd," he said. "Change is coming."

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Stocks shocked.
by Matthew Yeomans
5 Sep 2008 at 3:03pm
The BBC picks up on the continuing global stock market travails with news that Japan's benchmark Nikkei index fell 3% in afternoon trading. Yesterday saw the Dow drop 345 points on "mixed retail sales, lower oil prices and dour labor market readings," writes CNN Money - all amplifications of a slowing global economy and plunging it back into bear territory notes the Wall Street Journal.It's not just the big old economies that are struggling. The Financial Times tells us that Russia's central bank yesterday was forced to prop up the ruble after foreign capital - some analysts say as much as $21 billion - was pulled out of the country in response to Moscow's military action in Georgia. Meanwhile China is feeling the fallout of its own foreign adventure in dollarland. The New York Times reports that China's central bank needs new capital due to its $1 trillion spending spree of U.S. Treasury bonds and mortgage securities. "Those investments have been declining sharply in value when converted from dollars into the strong yuan, casting a spotlight on the central bank's tiny [$3.2 billion] capital base," it writes. This Chinese cash crunch is a delicate topic and is likely to mean China is disinclined to let the yuan continue rising against the dollar, which would further devaluie its holdings.The FT reports that bank stocks plummeted after the European Central Bank announced a crackdown on abuses of its bank liquidity operations that will raise the risk of owning debt, notably for "financial firms that have developed too great a dependence on cheap funding from the bank." Analysts estimate the ECB directive will further squeeze banks, increasing the "pressure on them to do more expensive longer-term funding." One of the troubled banks cited by the FT for "gaming the system" by using asset-backed securities to obtain ECB funds is Lehman Brothers. Now the NYT tells us that Lehman is "working toward a radical solution in its fight for survival: Splitting itself into a 'good' bank and a 'bad' one." Essentially, the bank is contemplating offloading $30 billion of its riskiest holdings into a new publicly traded company while keeping its strongest investments in-house, using those to attract a cash infusion from investors. The WSJ reports that Dell is "trying to sell its computer factories around the world" as it seeks to shape a more competitive business model based on using contract manufacturers to produce its PCs. While that might sound like taking cloud computing a tad too far, the lean and mean production model is part of a growing industry trend. At present Dell "finds itself lagging rivals in wringing the most savings by outsourcing operations to production partners," most likely in Asia says the WSJ. Meanwhile Sony has a problem that Dell remembers all to well. The Japanese electronics giant announced a recall of 438,000 Vaio PCs "due to possible overheating that could burn users," says the FT. Sony shares fell 4% Friday on the news of this reincarnation of an issue that in the past has affected Apple and Dell PCs using Sony batteries.The NYT reports that Altria Group (formerly Philip Morris) is in "advanced talks" to buy UST, maker of Skoal and Copenhagen smokeless tobacco brands, for more than $10 billion. Smokeless tobacco is one of the few areas of the tobacco business that is still growing says the NYT, but Altria failed to launch a successful smokeless product around its Marlboro brand. Negotiations are due to continue through the weekend though the NYT cautions that, just like Sony Vaio's, the deal could still go up in smoke.Finally, if you are an industry looking for a $50 billion bailout from the federal government it helps to be located in the crucial swing states of Michigan and Ohio. CNN Money tells us that the loan package proposed by the GM, Ford and Chrysler has the support of presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain along with the Bush administration, even though the "program may not necessarily save a member of the Big Three from eventual bankruptcy."

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Now both candidates have given bad speeches.
by Mickey Kaus
5 Sep 2008 at 9:06am
McCain Speech React: I predicted McCain's would be a good speech. Wrong again. That makes two successful conventions ending with weak final acts.

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Are people more excited about Sarah Palin than John McCain?
5 Sep 2008 at 9:04am
Are people more excited about Palin than McCain?

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The presidential race enters a 60-day sprint.
by John Dickerson
5 Sep 2008 at 8:58am
John McCain wanted to make a clear contrast Thursday with Barack Obama, and he did: His acceptance speech was as halting as Obama's was fluent. With the neon-blue screen behind him, McCain could have been your local TV weatherman?a map could pop up at any moment!?or a contestant on Jeopardy. His call to national service was lost in a rushed delivery, and his crescendo at the end was drowned out by an audience that had been told to stand up but did so before the candidate called on them to "stand up!" (It turns out it's a little harder to pull off one of these speeches than some think.)

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The latest from Slate's Republican Convention Twitter feed.
5 Sep 2008 at 7:22am
All this week, Slate's going to be Twittering about the Republican National Convention. Keep coming back to this page to read our 20 latest tweets, which will automatically update below. You can also follow us at http://twitter.com/Slate, and you can read an explanation of our Twitter project here.

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