To clarify. I am embarrassed by Obama receiving a Nobel Peace Prize for doing barely anything. I am as always impressed by Glenn Greenwald.

That's it. I am embarrassed.

See above.

I remember during the early primary when I complained via email to MSNBC about what I felt to be poor coverage of John Edwards' campaign, and in particular his progressive and to me exciting economic and health policy statements. I suggested that MSNBC had emphasized the horse race between celebrities (Obama and Clinton) rather than engaging with serious policy differences that would affect the lives of the poor and the working poor.

Chuck was nice enough to email me back that he understood my frustration but felt MSNBC's coverage of the Edwards campaign was "adequate" and "the rest is up to him [Edwards]". As though the campaigns were something happening "to" MSNBC, just as Glenn says. As though the media have no responsibility to dig or think or analyze policy ideas that will have differing impacts.

Well, we now have an inspirational president with moderate to conservative views and a good family life. We are still in Iraq and sending more troops to Afghanistan. Our Treasury Department was hired right out of Goldman-Sachs. And the working poor are out of work and the public option almost a dream barely remembered.

We can be (almost) sure that there was indeed no serious coverage of Edwards during the campaign because, had there been, or had it even been "adequate" for that matter, we would have learned not only about the difference between a Larry Summers and a Joseph Stiglitz, but about Edwards' indiscretions, reported long after he left the race, not by MSNBC but by the National Inquirer.

Muslims were not bombing, beheading, stoning (as in women), covering (as in burkhas), cutting (as in arms and legs off in Somalia or wherever) etc. I think we are all just getting tired.

I guess I am getting bitter in my not so old age but honestly we need jobs to build the economy and health care and I'm like, yeah, great, there's the garden, fine, whatever. I can't help but think that people getting excited about this garden and how it will inspire children blah blah have jobs and and good health insurance policies. This article was the lead from Salon in my email box this morning....I guess that's why my nose seems to be out of joint. Oh, no, it's because I am going to the doctor this morning and I have a high deductible. Oh well, it's both.

It seems to me that no matter how bad this film is that it almost surely will make money for all involved. Don't like the directing? Well, who cares. I imagine Justin Lin was well paid and will be well paid in the future, even if in the opinion of most critics and for that matter most adults, the movie should suck. Tokyo Drift was truly dreadful and here we are again. Obviously it made money. I think it is demoralizing.

Vulnerable populations may believe this stuff. My mom at 86 read a brochure claiming that her medicine for hypothyroidism was poisoning her and that the real cause was inflammation. She took herself off of the thyroid medicine she had been taking for 30 years, with extremely bad effects and ultimately the loss of her independence. She's dead now, but the brochures keep coming. If PBS or any other network or station using the public airways is broadcasting this stuff they need to be stopped.

...brilliant progressive economists endorsed John Edwards not Barack Obama. They knew. I like Obama. He's a cool dude. But he is basically pretty conservative.

What seems to be missing in the discussion is socioeconomic class vs race or at least where the two intersect. Is it the race card or is it the class card that the Republicans are playing? The notion that poverty or economic bad luck are signs of moral failing goes back to the Puritan Ethic and is alive and well in the Republican Party. I think sometimes race is a stand in for socieconomic class rather than the opposite. Don't jump on me...just think about it.

"Because, let's face it, we're not nearly as cool as we were 40 years ago. Our hairstyles are ugly, our taste in food and music sucks, we don't read, we take ourselves way too seriously but have nothing original to say, we drive like assholes and these pants make our ass look fat."

Who and what is she talking about? I mean seriously, what does this paragraph mean? What is the antecedent for "we"? How old is the writer? Was she alive 40 years ago? Is she talking about herself? What about the "assholes" and "ass" in the last sentence...? Is there a term for that? (I mean a term like alliteration only that's not the term obviously.)

I genuinely had to skip to the letters and ask these questions. I couldn't go on after that paragraph. It needs to be studied. One shouldn't have to keep reading in order to decipher its meaning. A paragraph I feel should stand on its own. This isn't stand up comedy.

Of course, if she is talking about me as opposed to we, that changes everything. Is she guys? Talking about me? Is this something about baby boomers again?

Sorry.

...this issue as so many others to be framed as left/right? Why is it left wing versus any wing to object to a bigot being given a national stage?