I just can't understand the attention paid to any of the cable anchors. They have tiny audiences compared to just about everything else. Dobbs, for example, was watched by about 631,000 viewers. That's nothing. Even the big ones like O'Reilly rarely reach 1.5 million. Poor Dobbs got all caught up in the attention and actually thinks he makes a difference. What a joke. I could tell during his idiotic con-air self-aggrandizing little convention last fall that's where he was headed. Just ignore him. He'll fade away in a matter of days.

Well, I've decided to not buy any new car until it gets an average (city and rural) of 50 mpg. The new VW diesel already comes close so it's doable. Don't care if it's electric, hybrid or what. Until they can guarantee the 50mpg, I'm fixing up the old cars (which get 30 now anyway.)

That's strange. And here I thought beauty was in the mind, not the ass. Michelle Obama is one of the classiest, smartest people on the campaign trail. This article was stupid, vapid, and demeaning and not even funny, nor ironic in any sense of the word. So much going on to report about and Salon descends to the sexist and immaterial. Salon should be ashamed.

@Orville Larson

I just finished Halsey's Typhoon by Drury (excellent by the way) and don't believe that the Court of Inquiry found McCain and Halsey guilty of "lack of proper seamanship." There was an awful lot of blame to go around including McCain's failure to properly interpret the weather reports, but the weather reports were coming out of Pearl and no one knew exactly what was going on. Failure to permit the destroyers to refuel earler was probably a bigger mistake. I know the Court of Inquiry report was recently declassified and would love to see a citation to it and would be happy to be corrected.

Regarding the article: this would make an interesting piece in a McCain biography, but has absolutely nothing to do with the campaign. I am loathe to blame children for what happens to their parents (and vice versa.) I'm an Obama supporter, but this article is silly and adds nothing to the political landscape.

Silliness. Of course McCain will show up. He will look like an idiot if he doesn't show. He shot himself in the foot again.

So much for corporate audits and validated balance sheets. When I ask my friends about why accounting audits did not show impending doom, their response is just that the only purpose of an audit is to make sure the company is following "generally accepted accounting principles." Well, then those principles are worthless.

Amazing. Just imagine if some country like Venezuela had done what the Republicans just did, i.e. nationalized virtually the entire financial sector. The right-wing would be howling. Incredible. They socialize Wall Street in the guise of a bailout of their friends. Their brazenness will never cease to amaze me.

Someone can perhaps explain to me how the proposed rule changes the would ease the restrictions on moving money from regulated banks to less regulated (and more risk-oriented) affiliates would help. Doesn't that just make increase the likelihood of new problems arising and run the risk of ruining the financial stability of commercial banks? (See "Regulators Try to Change Rules to Match the Need, NYTimes 9/18/08)

More re the "great" Ehrlich predictions: All of [Ehrlich's] grim predictions had been decisively overturned by events. Ehrlich was wrong about higher natural resource prices, about "famines of unbelievable proportions" occurring by 1975, about "hundreds of millions of people starving to death" in the 1970s and '80s, about the world "entering a genuine age of scarcity." In 1990, for his having promoted "greater public understanding of environmental problems," Ehrlich received a MacArthur Foundation Genius Award." [Simon] always found it somewhat peculiar that neither the Science piece nor his public wager with Ehrlich nor anything else that he did, said, or wrote seemed to make much of a dent on the world at large. For some reason he could never comprehend, people were inclined to believe the very worst about anything and everything; they were immune to contrary evidence just as if they'd been medically vaccinated against the force of fact. Furthermore, there seemed to be a bizarre reverse-Cassandra effect operating in the universe: whereas the mythical Cassandra spoke the awful truth and was not believed, these days "experts" spoke awful falsehoods, and they were believed. Repeatedly being wrong actually seemed to be an advantage, conferring some sort of puzzling magic glow upon the speaker.[4]

Go back and reread some of Ehrlich's predictions. As the famous Simon Ehrlich wager showed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon-Ehrlich_wager) Ehrlich didn't know what he was talking about. I never cease to be amazed at how someone who is always so wrong can become the darling of the media. Doomsday predictors just get more attention.

Anne:

I love your stuff, but you would feel much better if you could just accept that there is no God, that life is a series of random events, that sh&t happens, that humans are one of nature's mistakes and will soon doom themselves. Just be glad you are alive, enjoy the beautiful sunsets and sunrises. Recognize that the world is filled with stupid, ignorant people. But please don't quit writing, whatever you do. I immensely enjoy your wit.