"There is even an outside chance that Barack Obama, seeing it as his only opportunity to catch up to Hillary Clinton, will move to the left on the Middle East.

It's foolish to make the perfect the enemy of the good, and Democrats who are disillusioned with their party shouldn't sit out the 2008 elections. Make no mistake: On the Middle East, any of the Democratic candidates would be a big improvement over Bush."

What have the democrats in the house done with their majority-- how is anything that has come out of the House since january "good", let alone perfect? They increased the minimum wage-- wouldn't the GOP have done so anyway to help "distance" themselves from an unpopular president?

40 years ago Nixon promised to end LBJ's war, but instead expanded it. As far as I can see, all Hillary and Obama and Edwards are doing are vying to be the next Nixon.

In Israel they have a phrase, "shooting and crying" to describe the policies of Israelis who insist they're liberals and hate their government's policies, but squarely stand with them at every crucial vote. I don't want another Kerry to be the dem's standard-bearer, another better-manager-of-failed-policies type. I have no use for them.

The problem actually isn't the worthless top-tier candidates but the worthless "rational voters".

Assuming the opinion polls aren't cooked, if "likely democratic voters" decided to start supporting the likes of Kucinich and Richardson and Gravel, tough-talking Hillary's 180 would be so abrupt the nation's chiropractors would say a prayer of thanks for the anti-war democrats, what with all the necks of observers they'd have to adjust, and ole HRC would suddenly start talking about how much she hates war and wants to hug and kiss brown people, and how dubya better get serious and who knows what else.

it's slow and stupid-looking, and aimed at eco-snobs. That's a very thin slice of the market, and I seriously doubt there's room for a 2nd slow and stupid-looking eco-snob car to make money off of this niche-- even if it's made by Saab.

if we end up with a "cash free" economy, apart from having all our financial exchanges available for governmental and commercial scrutiny, it'll be that much harder on undocumented aliens to get by, and they'll be even more vulnerable to price-gouging and other abuses by hostile, prejudiced Americans.

Likewise the credit card industry will have less need to have a moratorium on bankruptcy as people will have to stay in the credit system anyway in order to do virtually anything.

Even though I recognize that the electoral college is an artifact from another era, I'm leery of constitutional reform in general, and of such a substantial reform in particular, for a pretty simple reason--

right now, amending the constitution is seen as difficult; if this is done, and done comparatively easily(unlikely, but let's just say it happened easily), then it would have the psychological effect of unbarring the door to scores of really hateful constitutional initiatives, targeting the rights of immigrants, the accused, gays, and women seeking abortions-- and that's probably just for starters.

Also, it occurs to me that the only way to abolish the electoral college is to change the minimum number of congressional districts for low-population states like Idaho and Alaska to two(or more), as a political bribe to get the legislatures of the low-population states to go along.

Finally, and paradoxically, it would essentially disenfranchise voters in the mountain states with respect to influencing the presidential race-- a power vacuum that corporations, like big logging and big mining, are likely to fill.

"The New York senator had successfully joined the Democratic consensus against the Iraqi misadventure, but her cover-her-right-flank vote on Iran may yet prove a problem with antiwar voters in Iowa and New Hampshire."

I don't buy it. Hillary has vaguely intimated that she's against the war and would (probably) end it, but her broader hawkishness as well as statements (on more than one occasion) that she anticipates a long occupation suggest she doesn't really mean it. This isn't being covered closely by the press, possibly because it would highlight how dismissive the mainstream press coverage has been of Kucinich, Gravel, and Paul.

Nevertheless, as the summer of 2008 approaches it's pretty likely that news from Iraq will get worse, and the press will give the GOP nominee a pass while scrutinizing any hawkish dem nominee with the hypocrite meme. And what if Ron Paul bolts and runs as an independent?

Hillary is a very skilled debater, and has a more agreeable presentational style than Kerry did, but she's still a weak candidate for the general election. She's the front-runner and the establishment candidate, so it's pretty unlikely she'll be toppled, unlike Howard Dean who was the front-runner and loathed by the party establishment-- who were relieved when Kerry emerged from the pack and so helped engineer the Dean bust with bags of their money for the anti-Dean.

Nevertheless, I think Edwards is the strongest of the top-tier dem candidates in terms of the general election-- that's not an endorsement, just an observation.

"According to the prevailing social sensibility, anyone who dares to don a BT headset out in the world is a self-important, unrefined boob."

your assessment is, I think, correct-- but perhaps it's less the wearing of the headsets than the apparent predisposition of the self-important and unrefined to buy and operate these devices.

Don't you ever wonder if monster-sized SUVs "make" people jerks behind the wheel or if it's more likely that people who are given to being jerks behind the wheel that gravitate to buying them? (I don't know, maybe both dynamics are at play to some degree...)

Anyway, my point is not that wearing the BT device makes you a pompous boob, but that buying and wearing one means you've joined a club that probably has a higher than average concentration of pompous boobs.

mmmmmmm...steak...