There. Now that this is out of the way:

Garrison, I feel sad for you, but also glad for your brother, because I'm guessing that though he may have preferred to die while in Italy, he probably would have preferred exiting the way he did to, say, a long drawn-out death from cancer or Alzheimer's. He died at pretty darned close to his peak, with a lifetime of accumulated wisdom more than compensating for any age-related infirmities, doing one of the thing he loved. How many of us will be able to say that?

As this article (http://www.energycurrent.com/index.php?id=3&storyid=16450) notes:

1) The utilities are using tax and other credits to encourage homeowners and businesses to go solar. (By the way, this is where single-family and small-scale apartment/condo complexes have the advantage over high-rises for now: More rooftop space per resident = More energy per resident. This is also another argument for improving solar efficiency, so that people with small shares of rooftop space can still go solar and see real benefits. This goes double and triple for those places north and east of Arizona and New Mexico: http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old_data/nsrdb/redbook/atlas/serve.cgi)

2) Upgrading the grid, not by building transmission lines, but by making them smarter: New systems work to direct energy where it's needed, when it's needed.

Check out their recent posts on it:

http://bonddad.blogspot.com/2009/03/geitner-plan.html

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/03/the-geithner-plan-faq.html

http://idonotlikeyoueither.blogspot.com/2009/03/geithner-plan-preliminary-comments.html

So it's not as if all the smarties in the world are on one side here.

Somebody THAT bone-stupid?

Meanwhile, for the persons in this thread who AREN'T sitting at the kiddie table: Cottonwood County is on the other side of the state from Minnesota's Answer to Katherine Harris, in Minnesota's Fighting First: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MN_Congressional_District_1.gif

Even the other reporters laughed, because they knew Henry was being way out of line. You could tell it left a mark because it pissed off CNN -- they went out of their way to spin Obama's performance at the presser as "angry" and "tired" and pretty much totally different from the one most Americans saw last night. The AP's own Ron "Rove" Fourner, who was on tap to be John McCain's official campaign spokesman until he apparently decided he could help McCain more right where he was, couldn't have been more offensive in his anti-Obama spinning (though it's not as if "Rove" didn't try: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20090324/obama-analysis/)

'Cuz it sounds suspiciously like some Republican astroturf I've seen clogging various other letters and comments sections lately. You apparently didn't watch the presser; it sounds more like you're just rewriting some talking points you were handed.

...and he was slated to be John McCain's chief campaign press flack: http://mediamatters.org/columns/200807220006

Oh, and I did I mention that he's a fan of Karl Rove?

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ron_Fournier

I wouldn't trust anything the AP says uncritically. Especially when it's Ron "Rove" Fournier himself saying it.

Isn't it interesting how few comments this article is getting? Everybody's over at the Newsweek article, huffing faux outrage about the MSM. Few want to think about innocent people isolated and tortured for years to keep from our little panic attacks.

How surprising.

Especially when the bulk of actual terrorists in the US are Nice White Conservatives such as the Noonday, Texas gang run by William Krar that made cyanide and suitcase bombs for right-wing militia groups across the country. (http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=378)

Oh, you didn't hear about those folks? Not surprising -- it didn't get as much media play as the group of ignorant schlubs in Florida who "plotted to bomb the Sears Tower" but whose most competent member by far was the FBI informant egging them on and serving as their head plotter. Or the bozo who thought he could take down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch. Those guys got more publicity because they were brown-skinned folks from out of town.

Meanwhile, the next batches of Timothy McVeighs sit in their basements, nursing their hatreds, and are readying their tools, while we're all distracted by the press hyping yet another brown-skinned guy who might have said something that scared somebody somewhere. And some of them, like the rich Maine trust-fund kid who was trying to build a dirty bomb before his wife shot him (http://jonathanstray.com/maine-man-tries-to-build-dirty-bomb), are a lot farther along than the brown guys who get the headlines.

Considering some of the letters here, it's ironic that Glenn Greenwald's post on endless right-wing self-pity is quite prominent in the sidebar right now. Some people act as if victimhood is a zero-sum game, as if somebody else's victimhood depletes their right to be a victim or some sort of suchness -- because they wrongly see this photoessay as being solely about victimhood.

And is prone to being easily rolled by con artists who use his own dislike of Rupert Murdoch against him. See, for example, here: http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/02/brian_deer_responds_to_keith_olbermann.php

Sully ditched his plane in freezing cold water, which would have killed them inside of fifteen minutes if they'd had to stay in it. Rall's people didn't have to worry about hypothermia. (Then again, Sully's passengers didn't have to worry about sharks.)