You're hearing some complaints that you're just sitting on all that money that was raised for immediate action, and to some extent they are justified. Flood the zone, spend it all, then ask for more. If people see you're actually doing something with their contributions, they'll give more. But if they don't see what you're doing with the money, or sense you're "keeping your powder dry" until the right "time" or whatever, you'll lose them. That's the attitude so many of us have been fighting for so many years.

Seconded. There's another $100 right behind the first $100 I spent nearly a week and a half ago. No one is advocating spending it willy-nilly.. perhaps a "we spent roughly this much this week/today on such and such a campaign" prospectus for investors? I know you occasionally update us, and I'm poking you for another status update, I guess.

I've been putting a lot of time in following this issue - time i don't have. I guess I'm just looking for some good news.

You are correct in your assumptions. There is no "change" in Obama's plans to withdraw from Iraq. Had I not been stuck at SkyHarbor Airport on a delayed flight back to civilization I would have been yelling and throwing things at the screen (imagine the headline: "San Francisco man shuts down Phoenix airport terminal in an apparent case of 'terminal rage'").

However, the Obama campaign quickly quelled that story, to my satisfaction, in as much as it got its soundbytes into the news cycle and Obama comes off as gently ribbing the media for getting the story wrong (think Pres. Jeb Bartlett and his famous wit). "Let's try this one more time," is the money quote. The Senator then restating his same position on Iraq ("about a brigade a month, 16 months more or less, depending on the advise of military leaders on the ground ...").

Still. CNN in airport terminals. Its criminal. I one day hope to find myself sitting next to a UT commenter at the terminal, or Glenzilla himself, so I'm not the only person at the airport having a fit/Tourette's incident and sending death glares to that smug chimpanzee Anderson Cooper. (God forbid Glenn Beck was on.. I'd be on my way to Gitmo).

How funny we monkeys are with our incessant need to categorize everything!

I first stumbled on "Stuff White People Like" while reading "The assimilated Negro".

I'm totally listening to Fleetwood Mac right now.

Or, can I call you Steve Cincuenta y uno?

Meta, meta, meta, meta.

All these comments are one giant self-referential white people's circle jerk. Apparently, more than anything, white people need to be the one who sees the irony and internal contradictions, who see the lack of self-awareness, in the last white person's comment.

OMG I TOTALLY AGREE! WHITE PEOPLE ARE INCAPABLE OF ACTUALLY REALLY UNDERSTANDING IRONY BECAUSE ITS LIKE RAIN ON YOUR WEDDING DAY!!! LOL!

My good friend and sort of former boss Chris Fisher used to chastise me with the following words of advise: "why do you always tear down? why can't you build up? camper!"

Of course, that was just him being whitely sarcastic (or sarcastically white, you tell me).

But my point is.. why must you tear it down, instead of building it up? Why the hate?

Believe it or not white people are ignorant monkeys too! Just like you! We are capable of understanding that idiot, ignorant monkeys like you may come into conflict with idiot, ignorant moneys like me..

I can say to some degree of certainty the monkey you and monkey me are stupid, stupid animals. How you like them bananas?

Being willing to cut a deal with the enemy is part of a practical, hardheaded political strategy; as Alinsky wrote, "To the organizer, compromise is a key and beautiful word." An activist I know told me that the strength of the Alinsky-model groups is that "they get things done," but (as a recent arrangement ACORN made with developers in Brooklyn, N.Y., illustrates) they also leave themselves open to charges of selling out.

Interesting timing, releasing this on the heels of the great FISA debacle.

No, I don't mean our military men and women in Iraq, but rather me, in my living room, and the prospect of being transported to Lejeune or Baghdad.

I lived with a former Marine for many years. He affected a kind of warped sense of humor in day-to-day interactions, for instance, noting which of the kitchen utensils where lethal (all of them). He would tell me how the NSA agents he worked with in Signal Corps smoked a lot and talked a lot about the weather and nothing else. We would joke that he was someone you wanted on his team when the zombie apocalypse came.

But I could tell that he always, as open and as generous a person he could be, had compartmentalized his experiences and that there was a certain lethal side to him that I could never fully come to understand. It was because of his openness that the existence of secrets kept close to the vest were as apparent to me as dark matter is to an astrophysicist.

So, it is with a great degree of interest that I will be watching Simon and Burns' latest project: having over 5 seasons gotten so much right about the corner, cops, addicts, politicians and children inhabiting mythical Baltimore (I still think the newspapermen were a little cartoony, but I'm sure subsequent viewiings may soften my disappointment with the final season of "The Wire").

Also, thanks Heather for reminding me to put it on my Season Pass.