...sounds nice, but it won't do you much good if you quit after the first week. Or if you get burned out or injured or even dead.

Exercise doesn't work if you don't come back, or if you hurt yourself. When you figure in the level of activity that a normal person can actually SUSTAIN for week after week, month after month, year after year, then the amount of weight they will likely lose is surely going to be far less than 2 pounds per week. It will probably be closer to 2 pounds per month, if that.

An added thought: if you lose 2 pounds or less per month, than that is going to be very frustrating, because your weight can fluctuate by more than 2 pound in a day. That means your weight loss won't show up on your scale for at least two months and possibly even more. In fact, it may even look like you've gained weight. The only cure is to keep going and not quit.

Ultimately, exercise really should be for fun and for health, not for weight loss. If it's just a job that needs a payoff (ie, weight loss) than it's just going to be a miserable grind for most people and they won't keep it up.

...in a time when incumbents usually get re-elected over 90 percent of the time.

You'd think that would be a story.

...because his district was 20 percent Muslim doesn't make any sense to me.

Why would Condi care? Even if she did, why would the British care?

It doesn't even follow that Straw was dependent on Muslim votes. Maybe they all voted against him.

It's a glaringly weak part of the article. It seems like the sort of story the British might believe if they didn't understand us.

Why can't anyone in the democratic party grow a pair and just explain that?

The time to have grown a 'pair' was when we attacked Iraq. So however you might want to parse the vote, if the Democrats didn't object to the war when it started, then they effectively voted for the war. There's just no other way to put it.

Democrats need to stop always trying to have everything both ways. Recall that they tried to do the same thing in opposite fashion in the first Gulf war, with equally disastrous political results; even though most Democrats voted for every single step that placed our troops in harm's way in the ME, and probably privately supported the war, they still voted against the general war resolution in order to try to capitalize on the political fallout if the war didn't turn out well for Bush I. Unfortunately for the Democrats, the war did turn out well, more or less.

In this war, I'll bet most Democrats privately thought the war would be a hue mistake. But they still voted for the resolution because they thought they had to do it politically. Now they are paying for that miscalculation.

Democrats need to stop making stupid political calculations and start voting how their brains tell them to vote and not how their nearly worthless political consultants tell them how to vote.

...once again, the administration's policies have crashed and burned, yet no one seems to care or notice.

Not just in Lebanon, but the war on terror is a complete failure, as proven by the arrests in London last week. And energy prices are still going through the roof. I saw a gas station last week jammed full of people buying gas at the 'bargain' price of $3.00 per gallon.

Where are the calls for his resignation? Where are the demands for a change of course? Where is the slightest penalty that Bush has suffered for any of his failures?

Jimmy Carter was mocked and scorned for far lesser failures than this administration has incurred, month after month after month after month. We heard all about Jimmy Carter's 'killer rabbit,' but Bush's brain killing bike rides are almost never discussed.

I can only conclude that it's not just Bush who's disassociated from reality, but the US as a whole. We are no longer a country that faces reality.

He needs to be simple, straightforward, and a Democrat.

Lieberman, you see, can't do any of that. He can only tie himself into a pretzel, because his position is simply twisty and untenable.

Lamont should hammer away at Lieberman: what is he? Is Lieberman a Democrat or a Republican? If he is a Democrat, why is he accepting Republican support? If he is a Republican, why is he taking Democratic positions?

Lamont has the opportunity to take clear and certain stands, while at the same time broadening his appeal as more people become familiar with him. Lieberman can only come out looking like he's for himself. I believe Lieberman's support can only erode from here on out.

Lieberman is up by 13 now. But he'll never do better than that. If Lamont can make a case for himself and tie Lieberman to Bush, then he can erode Lieberman's lead and beat Lieberman.

And that's what other Democrats have to do as well. It's time for Democrats to stop knocking Democrats and start knocking the Republicans and tie them to Bush.

Nerdnam's 11th commandment for Democrats: Democrats shall not speak ill of any Democratic nominee after the primaries.

Lieberman's no longer a Democrat, so the hell with him. But Lamont is a Democrat who should be fully supported.

...will in fact be electing their own representative this fall, thank you, Shaun. It just might not be Joe Lieberman, however.

Why in the world Democrats shouldn't support the Democrat who actually won the Democratic primary is beyond my ken. Neither do I undestand why Democrats ought to support someone that George Bush and Karl Rove are now helping. I guess incumbency must override everything, even the wishes of the voters.