Sorry, being reasonable is an unreasonable reaction. You're supposed to rail against Obama for not promising to use his magic wand to deliver everything that the simplistic subset of his supporters want, and prevent everything that they don't want.

It's too bad that so many Democrats have corrupted the word "compromise" by using it to describe things that are actually capitulations. Real compromise is how politics is supposed to work and too many people now have a knee-jerk reaction to real-world possibilities.

Of course, that does give the concern trolls a great audience to play to ...

"The allegation that the White House directed anyone to forge a document from [former Iraqi intelligence director Tahir Jalil] Habbush to Saddam is just absurd," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto.

Handy translation: "We're damn sure that we covered our tracks, and if we can convince enough people that this a conspiracy theory, we'll have even less to worry about."

(As an aside, it's interesting that the term "conspiracy theory" has become such an easy tool to dismiss something. Sure, some "conspiracy theories" aren't worth the effort needed to roll your eyes at them. But it seems like a given that there are conspiracies, even if they don't rise to the all-encompassing level of the Illuminati. So one would think that trying to detect such conspiracies via observation, theorizing, and research would be a good thing.

Indeed, that's what real investigative journalism is. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were essentially conspiracy theorists as they helped uncover the twisted back-story of a burglary.)

Given everything that has happened over the last seven years -- not just with the anthrax attacks but with countless episodes of Government deceit and corruption -- it's astonishing (and more than a little disturbing) how many people are willing, even eager, to assume that the Government's accusations against Ivins are accurate even without seeing a shred of evidence to support those claims.

I find it disturbing, yes, but I don't find it astonishing at all. Sure, there's a tradition in the US of stated distrust of the government, which can manifest in good ways or not-so-good ways. But most people very much want to trust both law enforcement and the military, because it's pretty disturbing to think they might not be trustworthy. First, that would cast doubts on those who are supposed to keep us safe from "the Other". Second, it would cause us to wonder whether we're safe from the protectors themselves.

Sure, US storytelling is full of "dirty cops" and "men in black" and so on. But for one thing, that's comfortable fiction. You turn the last page, or the movie theater lights go on, and the story is over, usually with a comforting ending. Also, in many of those stories, the untrustworthy elements are generally "rogues" and/or are breaking the rules in order to protect civilians. (Note that the Bush Admin and their apologists often invoke the latter storyline, subtly or otherwise.)

It is a shame organizers slated Gwen Ifill for the vice-presidential debate. It would have been a great media politics moment to have a black moderator for a debate featuring the first major-party black presidential nominee in history. Unless John McCain surprises and picks Condi Rice, such a moment is lost.

Just as well, maybe. You know how "they" all stick up for each other, after all. It takes a white person to be "fair and balanced".

(One of the most jaw-dropping bits of racism displayed by a late relative of mine was when he was ranting about how it was almost always "coloreds" who won the lottery. I politely expressed some doubt about this observation, and asked him how and why he thought the state lottery commission would do this. He triumphantly pointed out that the head of the commission was "one of them", as if this bit of "proof" clinched the argument. When I responded with something like "Um, so what?", he was honestly confused that I didn't see what an open-and-shut case it was. I think he couldn't decide whether I was being argumentative, naive, or just stupid.)

It's also worth noting that one of the biggest mistakes McCain made in his career -- not that he'll ever admit that it was a mistake -- happened in 2002/2003.

To whatever extent voters think of Iraq, he wants them to concentrate on the ending, not on the fact that there shouldn't have been a beginning.

I don't know how they do it these days, but I used to work on a dairy farm when I was a kid, and while we did indeed use milking machines, we always needed to finish the job by hand.

Besides which, y'all are taking Schaller way too seriously here.

Wasn't it Jon Stewart who said something like, "Real power is now defined as being able to shoot someone in the face, and have them publicly apologize to you."

That's why Obama worries me. He talks change, but I haven't seen evidence of him creating it. McCain on the other hand is without question an agent of change.

Yeah, like Bush has been an agent of change. But I don't think the country can survive four more years of that sort of change, so thanks but no thanks.

... and rightwingers have a history of doing so, because they know the numbers give MediaCorp an excuse to give them even more airtime.

I'm thinking that the most likely explanation is that the judge simply doesn't know -- or refuses to recognize -- the difference between a sexual proposition and sexual harassment.

That attitude isn't unknown in the US (though I like to think it's less common than it used to be). Witness the clueless sort who claim that rules against sexual harassment in schools and workplaces "essentially demand that we all pretend to be sexless beings", and so on.