you continue to be incredibly tone deaf in your scattershot approach to the issues. palinoia is not about "veddy veddy proper english," it's about stringing thoughts together in a coherent, intelligent way. you don't have to use big words or complex sentences to do that. you just have to make sense. and it's not just how she talks, it's what she says when she opens her mouth. it somewhat restored my respect for mccain, for example, to learn that he refused to stoop so low as to air the most heinous jeremiah wright ad during the campaign. would palin have blanched at spouting whatever lie might win her an election? i thought not.

meanwhile, your take on the gay rights issue is plain out of date. yes, it's wrong to indiscriminately confront every church of every religion in response to the passage of prop 8 and other such absurd laws. but direct confrontation and engagement with those of differing views is absolutely essential. anything else is waiting patiently on the back of the bus for the political winds to change-- which, without said confrontation, they never will.

ALSO -- i scanned your column in vain for mention of the obama birth cert. brouhaha. last time, i remember, you made a point of lending credence to this lunacy by wondering aloud about the obama camp's "reluctance" to disprove the lingering rumors. in the wake of the supreme court ruling and the fringe movement's strident wackiness, i see that you've abandoned ship.

you are nothing but an empty shell, looking to sail in whatever tiny slipstream of opinion and controversy you can find -- as long as it's relatively safe.

I'm here to kvetch in a similar vein about the general underreportedness (if that's a word) of my favorite sport. This year, despite Gary Bettman's seemingly deliberate attempts to drive hockey into the ground, it's enjoying a resurgence of popularity and quality, even as the economy threatens to cripple it once again. Many teams are playing an exciting style, there are some great young stars, goal-scoring is up...

And to me the top underrated story of the year was the Red Wings winning their fourth recent Stanley Cup. The eve of their victory last spring, some knucklehead outside a bar tried to convince me that, given their talent and financial advantages, the Wings are the NHL equivalent of the Atlanta Braves.

Um... no. The Red Wings have merely survived the most arduous season and playoffs in major professional sports FOUR TIMES over the past 10 or so years -- a surprisingly large number of their players, including captain Niklas Lidstrom (also the greatest defenseman of his era) have been there for all four of them -- and won sports' greatest trophy, the Stanley Cup. If this were basketball, football, baseball, we'd be building shrines to these guys. Is it their fault that poor league oversight and bad business decisions have made theirs a 2nd-tier sport in the U.S.?

I say no. And I realize the whole "most difficult" claim is eminently arguable. But if you follow hockey closely, you cannot disagree that their playoffs are a long, brutal affair, often won by attrition as much as skill. This to me only makes the Wings' accomplishment that much more impressive.

You can go to fivethirtyeight.com for such information. Are you one of the unfaithful disciples now denying your former allegiance to Bush? Shame on you.

Anyway, this sort of thing doesn't surprise me. At least it shows that most people have finally woken up to the fact that Bush's presidency was an unmitigated disaster. What worries me more are the people who STILL like Bush.

As for Obama having a longer honeymoon, I don't know about that. The guy hasn't even taken office yet and pundits on the left and right are already complaining about his appointments, for god's sake. It would be nice to give him a real chance to put his policies in place and see how they work -- I cringe at the thought of another crippled Dem. administration. Obama's smarter than Clinton was, but he also has more screaming harpies (and monkeys) to dodge.

Sorry for the hostility. I hadn't yet had my third cup of coffee for the day...

And as for Obama's appt's: of course we should talk about them. Of course we should look carefully at them and criticize them when it's warranted -- it probably always is, to some extent. And this is especially necessary after the reckless appt's made by the current admin.

But I don't think the doom-and-gloom conclusions that some are drawing from them are fair. Obama seems to be trying to surround himself with a competent team -- I won't say "of rivals" because that's already sounding pretty shopworn, and I know Hillary-haters will grind their teeth at "competent." But aside from not being as progressive as I'd like, I can't really complain too loudly about any of them. That's all I'm saying.

This is depressing. My mom and stepdad -- staunch listeners of Rush Limbaugh who no doubt voted 2x for Bush and now for McCain -- are both auto industry workers who were able to retire at age 55, thanks to their generous UAW benefits. Wonder how they're feeling today?

I'm tired of listening to folks blame the UAW. As has been pointed out elsewhere, the Big Three are a model when it comes to employer-paid health benefits. They've been saving the gov't billions each year in health care costs for millions of workers. What's going to happen when all those people suddenly need to be switched to Medicaid?

Sure the wages and other benefits need adjusting, but why should an honest lifetime's work not reward one with some security and decent health care? I don't care what people say about foreign car workers and southern plants. Ask those workers who they'd rather work for. The real issue here is poor management and a lack of foresight that goes back 30 years (if not 50). Don't blame the workers.