"The Democrats may have good reason to punish Florida and Michigan for moving up their primaries. Perhaps they think in the long run, it will be better for the primary process and democracy. But they are doing a rotten job of explaining it to people."

Perhaps. And perhaps it is more a measure of the effectiveness of the Clintons' effort to rewrite history regarding the matter. To link the Florida Primary of 2008 to the Florida Election Theft of 2000. To tie in civil rights and voting rights. To confuse the issue to the maximum extent of their ability, aided by a venal and superficial Mediacracy.

After all, the Clintons still command a presidential noise machine that is burning through millions of dollars a month with the sole message that Hillary hasn't lost yet, that she is being cheated, the Florida and Michigan have been treated unfairly (although, before it became apparent that she had no chance without Florida and Michigan, Hillary was completely happy with the situation).

Confusing honest people is what the old politics was all about. Nobody is disputing that the Clintons are masters of the old politics of dissembling and distortion. And they've managed to dupe a couple hundred honest folks in front of the DNC meeting this weekend.

Barack is busy running against McCain, the DNC is trying to raise money to win more Congressional seats (hampered by the unnecessary delay in selecting a Presidential nominee), and Hillary and Bill are using that opening to make as much mischief as possible.

The last part is what is truly rotten. Those two have a lot of explaining to do before respectable Democrats will give them the time of the day in the future. As far as I'm concerned, they've left the party. With luck, after this weekend, and the Tuesday primaries, we'll have seen the last of them.

All this talk about a meeting or a VP slot is way premature, until Hillary does the right thing and concedes.

If she is going to keep on roughing up Obama, and claiming to be the best candidate, then she can hardly expect him to meet with her to talk strategy.

Talking with your enemies is one thing. Talking to someone who is still actively shooting at you is another.

I don't think the Secret Service should let Obama get within harm's reach of Hillary at this point. She gives all the signs of being a threat to his person.

Perhaps after a cooling off period and a gracious concession, things will look different.

P.S. Just want to chime in that the "Billary" thing is lame.

Got ours from Culligan about 5 years ago. Our local water is very hard (you get sand in your ice cubes--no kidding) pretty chlorinated, and sometimes smells a bit funky.

Our reverse osmosis unit is mounted under the sink. Every six months they ship us a new particulate and charcoal filter, which we swap out ourselves. The Reverse Osmosis unit is swapped by the service on a less regular basis (every year or two).

The water tastes fabulous. We get no calcium scale in our teapot. Our ice cubes don't precipitate sand (in fact, they are quite lovely and clear--very posh!). We don't get any periodic whiffs of swampwater.

Another benefit is that reverse osmosis water sprouts seeds almost as well as rainwater.

We buy bottled water on rare occasions when we're away from home, keep the bottles and refill them until they wear out (those Gatorade Extreme bottles are particularily nice).

Our kids don't drink much soda. Our tea and coffee taste better. Our ice cubes are the pride of the neighborhood. And we don't spend much money buying water at all.

Viva la reverse osmosis!

Don't know the answer myself, but it is my understanding that trains are highly efficient at getting stuff from one place to another (low rolling resistance from metal wheels, excellent aerodynamics from a long, slim profile, and hybrid Deisel/Electric propulsion).

So now I'm supposed to believe a 30Mpg Camry is more efficient?

I'm seriously doubtful. I've always been of the opinion that it would make good sense for Amtrak to offer trips between the Coasts and other points of interest that included hauling the passengers' autos along, because of the efficiency of rail transport.

Have I been so wrong? I'm going to take some convincing.