Not that there might be some partisan retribution here, but Spring Hill, Tenn is the Saturn factory. Saturn was one of the brands on the chopping block, so maybe they're just moving ahead with the drastic restructuring they were already planning.

I used to bank at WaMu. Though I, also, never asked for it. I started out at Bank of America (ack!), and switched to Home Savings. They had beautiful branches throughout southern California (did you know bank buildings could be beautiful?). They had a bank in our neighborhood. And the people actually remembered me when I went in. We didn't have much money in those days (mid-nineties, just out of college), and it was really refreshing to be treated like a person at a bank.

Of course that couldn't last, and WaMu gobbled them up just like all the others. But they promised to keep the terms of our old account (including not charging us for using other banks' ATMs). The service was terrible -- they repeatedly failed to setup a direct debit for a car loan we got from them. The fees and hassle got worse and worse. I moved to a different part of the country with no WaMu branches nearby, and so I finally switched to another bank -- just another behemoth, but at least with local branches, and friendly-enough staff at our branch.

I think it's been a long time since most people gave a damn what happened to financial companies, even the ones they depend on. They can only dehumanize people for so long before it comes back to bite them.

OK, I'll bite. Here are Obama's positions:

Is he for or against offshore oil drilling?

He's against it. But he's a realist and understands that a majority of people are for it, so he'll accept it as part of a larger package that includes investment in alternative energy.

Does he think the surge in Iraq succeeded or not? If it did, why would he repeat his initial position against it knowing what he knows now?

He thinks the surge failed. We still have 140K troops in Iraq, there has been no major political progress, there is still a high level of violence. He is willing to concede that violence has decreased somewhat, but has consistently noted that the surge failed to produce political reconciliation in Iraq (the original benchmark). He also notes that some progress in Iraq has occurred in the last year or so, but attributes that to other factors, such as the Sunni Awakening and Maliki signing on to Obama's timeline and a weakened Bush administration following suit.

Is he for NAFTA or not? Depends on who he talks to, apparently -- voters in Ohio or the Canadians. Incidentally, the gov. of Ohio -- a Dem who supports Obama -- recently said that exports of goods manufactured in the state were what was keeping many companies afloat because of the weak domestic market. A good time to squash foreign trade? That's what they did after the 1929 stock market crash and look what followed.

He's for NAFTA, and trade in general. But he's also for better labor and environmental standards as part of trade agreements to avoid the worst impacts of free trade.

Tax policy? Now Obama says he might be willing to delay some of his proposed tax increases because of the weak economy. Does that mean he knows his tax plans will be counterproductive in terms of economic recovery?

He's for cutting taxes for almost everybody, and for letting the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 5% expire and return to where they were during the Clinton years. Again, he's a realist and understands that even some of the top 5% are having trouble right now, so would be willing to delay or phase-out expiration of the Bush tax cuts for the rich.

In short, some of his positions have nuance to them. I'm sorry if you have a hard time with that.

No, I don't think it's time to back off at all.

The Christianist right has been ruining people's lives, trashing people's reputations, and digging into everyone's dirty laundry for some time now. Now that one of theirs is getting the same treatment, it's time to back off?

I think it's time to slap them down -- hard. We don't just need to win in November. We need a landslide. We need 60 votes in the Senate before we can even start to undo the damage those un-American, un-Christian zealots have done to our country.

We don't have a national election. Don't you guys remember 2000? The national popular vote means nothing. The fact that Obama and McCain are within the margin of error for national polls doesn't mean anything.

If you look at any of the people who are trying to model how our actual electoral system works (RealClearPolitics.com, electoral-vote.com, FiveThirtyEight.com, etc.) Obama is roughly 100 electoral votes ahead according to current polls. That's not close, that's a solid Obama win.

Edwards isn't a public official (unlike Vitter and Craig), nor is he a candidate for public office. And frankly, even if he was, he hasn't based his candidacy on sexual morality (again unlike Vitter, Craig and many other Republicans). I never found it newsworthy when some politician got caught with their pants down, but at least with the Republicans it had some bearing on their policy positions.

We would be a lot better off if we stopped focusing on personality and morality, and instead focused on what policies politicians supported. In the primaries, there weren't many policy distinctions to talk about, so it was understandable that reporters focused so much on demographic patterns and differences of style. But now that we have Obama and McCain as nominees, can we talk about the substantive differences between them?