...is that a luger "slides down the run next to his sled instead of on top of it"???

>Yahoo news: Samantha Retrosi was injured following a frightening crash

"Remember Reagan carried 49 states in 1984," said Stephen Knott, a presidential scholar at the University of Virginia's Miller Center for Public Affairs. "And to be blunt about it, people weren't dying over Iran-Contra the way they are in Iraq."

It's one thing for an out-of-touch egghead to say such a thing, but quite another for you to quote this without so much as a comment -- clearly Miller means "Americans" when he says "people". Many hundreds of thousands Iranians, Iraqis, and Nicaraguans died because of the Inran-Contra mess. Or are you asserting that they are not people?

You say:

Since the end of World War II, three presidents have remained in office long enough to preside over sixth-year midterm elections: Eisenhower lost 48 seats in the House; Reagan lost five; Clinton gained five. That works out to an average loss of about 19 seats -- substantially fewer than Bush's Republicans lost Tuesday.

I believe that's an average *loss* of 16 seats, It is an average *change* of 19, but that's not the point...

...but there is a huge gap between sebelius and biden, while i might well flip sebelius and bayh 5 minutes from now. i do think obama has to maintain his brand: i am different. you might (might) not damage that brand with bayh, but you do nothing to enhance it. kaine and sebelius being governers helps enormously. the only edge for bayh is the chance of flipping indiana. but let's now pause to reflect on lloyd bentsen...

"attack dog" cannot be overstated (think lieberman 2000), but when you are gambling on expanding the competitive map, "delivering a state" is great leverage. the other two criteria are not important.

More than anything else, the choices of Biden and Palin make it clear that Obama thinks hard about the future of this country, while McCain thinks hard about how to get elected.

...why doesn't McCain simply nominate a saucepan for VP? After all, a saucepan has no less executive experience than Obama, Biden, and McCain put together?

...a dem candidate with a funny name and a worrisome racial background flips ia, co, nm, va, possibly oh while making war hero, maverick, and general all-around good-time guy mccain work his tail off to hold fl, nc, and possibly (maybe) oh would *not* be a map-expanding campaign??? sorry, i'm still with the 50-staters on this. you're not seeing the us map for all of those pesky states...

...gays and lesbians were one of very few demographic groups -- along with those 65+ -- who supported obama less than they supported kerry (70% vs 77%). odd alignment of the planets, i guess.

so, if obama is this generation's reagan, is palin this generation's mondale?

the current caucus? the new one? would this include franken, who is in washington, apparently?

...to say that "the Indians never posed a serious threat to American settlers". Wars in 17th century New England certainly imperiled european settlement there. What say might be "mostly" true, but there are plenty of historical exceptions.

at 1:25 pm tomorrow gwb *will* be the former president!

it's one thing to excuse geithner foot-in-mouth disease when he says things that anger the michelle bachmanns and other right-wing nutjobs. but the world of finance is supposed to be his forte! we are all expected to bow and scrape before his fiscal acumen. he knows what's best for us. but holy baloney...u.s. secretaries of the treasury are NOT supposed to make nuanced statements when asked such questions. they are expected, not just by main street but by the gated communities, to re-iterate mollifying platitudes, to be a rock, to stand firm, etc etc etc. geithner is a complete political moron, even amongst and relative to his peers.

...i have to say that more than once when i was deciding whether to renew my premium subscription a nontrivial part of the reason i continued with salon was your column. there's lots of stuff i enjoy at salon, much that i have no interest in, but your column was always something i looked forward to. as admirable as alan barra was i never got into his writing. your column had an interesting perspective, not confined to sport in the narrow sense. good luck at the new gig, but i hope salon pays sufficient attention to content. the loss of your column is a notable decrease in the quality of salon's content.

the first piece by o'hehir that i enjoyed reading! more please...

...also cuts to the heart of the matter:

The GOP has lost the same 18 states in five straight presidential elections, and John McCain wasn't within 10 points in any of them. Those states and the District of Columbia account for 248 electoral votes -- not a bad start to the 270 needed to win the White House. With the loss of Specter, the Senate delegations from those states are 34 Democrats and 2 Republicans.