I've known others in Hepola's position, but I can't really get too sympathetic. Up until 20 years ago, it was very difficult to get a visa card unless you had taken out loans, even if you had good retail credit from oil companies, department stores, etc. Now anyone gets the darn things. And, yes, people managed just fine before credit cards. You'd have to plan your purchases and do without a few luxuries, but the basic standard of living probably wasn't that much different from what Ms. Hepola enjoys.

I've had a couple opportunities for jobs in NYC in myearly 30s In both cases, I took a good hard look at what it would cost to live there before saying "yes, I'll take it if you make me an offer". In both cases, i was arunner-up, but at least I knew what I was doing when I was in Ms. Hepola's age group. That it didn't occur to her to have roommates sooner--not unusual in high cost cities----or make the most elementary of cuts long ago doesn't say much on her behalf.

He must be at least as old as McCain. My guess is that he'll attract some of the Kucinich voters, but hopefully, no one else will bother.

Their irrelevant not because they've functioned as an arm of the GOP, but because they pulled the other news organizations with them. CNN is filled with idiocy ranging from Lou Dobbs ( a total moron) to Nancy Grace (a crazy, discredited DA) to the vacuous nitwits that populate their regular news shows. MSNBC is little better once you get past Olbermann and the general quality of the legacy networks' news has plummeted. In all cases, the tv news organizations continue pandering to the GOP and Bush, with softball questions, shallow reporting and obvious bias. Fox can die happy because the rest of the field may be less shrill but fundamentally it isn't that much different.

This week's episode finally drew together the various story lines that have been developing since the season began--the "serial killer" story, the deterioration of the Sun, the corrupt politician, the various police, McNulty's personal life, and various thread related to Marlo's crew. The boxer even made an appearance. This episode gave me hope that things will start seeming less disjointed and move toward a real climax.

I did a fellowship at Indiana and taught there during Knight's heyday. He managed to help keep that school at the bottom of the big 10 as an undergraduate institution. They finally had a president who stood up to him and Knight got the alumni organized and forced the prexie to cave. Indiana had a great basektball facility, and excellent football stadium (despite years of forgettable teams), but terrible athletic facilities for students and faculty. The swim team (which dominated the Big 10 for over two decades) was stuck with a pool with a busted thermostat that no one wanted to fix. That was the kind of school that Bob knight and his admirers had. The prexie he stood down had wanted IU to finally shine academically (Purdue is the state school with strong academics in Indiana; out of state students from Ohio & Chicago keep IU's test scores from looking too pathetic). He never had a chance.

Edwards is certainly less allied with certain interest groups than Wynn, but this is hardly a matter of "moderate" versus "extremist". Wynn's voting record is largly liberal and Edwards isn't exactly some radical extremist. The GOP has been putting pressure on moderates for a long time, mostly by threatening them with primary battles if they don't make party line votes on key issues. Out of district money has long been important, particularly among people such as powerful committee chairs.

The assumption that we need "moderates" is problematic. Right now, it's Democratic moderates who block progressive legislation. As mentioned above, the GOP moderates have been pressured and muzzled on key issues for years. The kind of engaged bipartisanship that crafted useful compromises has been dead since Gingrich took leadership of the House Republicans. You could take a way the web and these dynamics would still be in place, because they began before the web exerted influence. The GOP will probably need some kind of "crack-up" before it can accomodate a pluralistic set representatives who come from the various GOP constituencies and allied ideologies.

Dennis Kucinich has a bunch of positions, but no coherent vision. When he was mayor of Cleveland in the late 70s, he did have a vision and it was a disaster. Strausbaugh clearly knows about neither aspects of Kucinich. The interview is full of stupidity like this. Strausbaugh has some superficial ideas that seem provacative, but they fall apart when anyone with a little depth of knowledge looks at them.