I tire of every Gary K column being a creative writing exercise. Obama is not a concept, he's a candidate. Where he stands on any particular issue is the crucial thing. Or, in the case of Salon, where he stands on Iraq, Women, the Environment and Race. Period. But in either case it would be nice to hear what he stands for and not what pundits imagine is a good platform for some other writing project about some other thing.

Before you have the opportunity to paint Obama as the Man Who Really Ended Slavery in America, you first have to win this election.

If Clinton leaves then the pundits will scream that Edwards is queer and Obama is a terrorist. And ya don't want none of them queer terrorist types runnin America, dya?

The Dems have a black man with an Arabic name running against a woman, for President and it's not progressive enough for them. Maybe the liberal 'blogosphere' is just retarded & vain & we need not take it seriously anymore. If you set out to be your own Manchurian Candidates you couldn't possibly be more self destructive.

And to be kind, TDS was in endless repeats and reruns before the strike. Stewart ran with his runaway success 2 years ago and the TDS show seemed to be on hiatus from one legal holiday to the next. Sorry, but you're imagining TDS of 8 years ago.

Honestly, it's a election not the new mocha Messiah. If I had a dime for every electocrat who, we were promised, was the new landlord of the bright shining city on the hill and the dawn of new day, etc etc etc, I could buy an island for myself and make myself a god.

So you got that.

Then she has all the resolve anyone would need.

I'm just cold blooded.

Search engines would rank nothing but porn and celebrity bashing sites.

And I DO hope you lassies won't complain too too much when, in 5 years and your drunk bareassed, panties round your ankles face down who was that guy I just blew/girl I just licked cell phone camera panorama is up on Facebook, that employer takes a pass on your job application.

I mean flick the switch and watch them die? I have. That's my standard. What's yours?

Right but try to get all your cargo through the St. Lawrence all of the time, for everything under all circumstances.

Google is a thousand data centers, bleeding edge mathematics, brand new software technology. Does he think that Wikinauts are going to replace all that with volunteer sweat?

I truly believe that Americans like to talk shit about paying the almighty dollar to the gubmint but what's at the core of it is the belief that paying taxes is like setting fire to your money in the middle of the street. Americans believe they get essentially nothing for their tax dollar. This is where the French system plays to personal interest in the context of socialism. You pay your 50% and in exchange you get free medical care, free or near free college, vast amounts of maternity leave, lavish unemployment benefits and great gobs of paid time off.

Now is that ideal, for everyone? No. But there is absolutely less resistance from the middle class to higher taxes (and $6/gallon gasoline as well) when they perceive that something comes back to them when they need it. It doesn't just burn in the street or go to solid gold aircraft carriers and whatnot.

Or are we just look for the most GOP candidate we can? Seriously if not then we're just a one party system the Democratic party is just a bunch of political gadflies. We could save 2 billion dollars in the election if this is the reality.

Give these over extended middle class leveraged losers some money and they'll just blow it on consumption. None of them will pay down their credit card debt or heaven forbid, SAVE it to oh I dunno pay for their kids college? Let's say they gave you $1000. What do you think would happen? A shopping trip to Circuit City.

It Bill Gates had Oprah's money, he'd jump out the window.

And in a good part of it women and children are literally chattel. So it depends on what you think success looks like, otherwise.

that always works.

Let's abandon a quarter of the US to dust because a few people in the rust belt are nostalgic. That works for me. Hey it would give us an excuse to cede Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, West Texas and part of Colorado back to the brown/red people. Of course wouldn't you be all up in arms THAT we gave them dry land anyway?

Nah you're right. Fuck those major US cities, all the people and the sum total of their economies. Die in a fire, all of them.

When you pick up your $9 "Buddha's Hand" citron. Wanna know what I do? I get a cold salad for lunch at WF and then take the bag to go to Aldi for groceries. $68 for organic jeans? That's precious.

When we run out of oil we won't sell you our solar power either. I hope there's enough hydro for you to buy. Or coal. Whichever. It's odd that the Great Lakes wants to resurrect this notion that national natural resources belong to them alone. But I can work with that. All the seacoasts are ours and you now have to pay a special interstate tariff to trans ship goods from them. 10th Ammendment be damned I say. You did.

I mean other than Gordon, who truly believes Jews are satanic beasts to be sent straight to hell in the crematoria, is there anyone here who doesn't understand that a newspaper column, is, at the end of the day, a newspaper column? Even NPR has its Maura Liason. I think it's called having a fig leaf of unbias or something like that.