When I was younger I was one hell of a gearhead. My first car was a '65 Mustang, and my second was a '69 GTO. I'm a '70 model myself, BTW (technically '70 1/2). I've always loved American cars, but the Big Three's utter stupidity over the last ten years has been epic. Why concentrate on SUV's and big trucks when it was inevitable that oil prices would one day surge and people would abandon these behemoths? Stupid stupid stupid.

The company deserves to die for this, but I don't want tens of thousands of people to lose their jobs. Whatever money the govt gives them has to come with a billion strings attached.

By the way, I think labor has some culpability in this as well. Who better to influence the direction of the company than the unions? They should have seen this coming too.

I'm curious. Does one of the editors here at Salon periodically sent out an email requesting someone find a shallow subject and over-analyze the living daylights out of it? That high school reunion article from a few weeks back was just like this: a light piece made extremely heavy by putting way way too much thought into it.

By the way, I read those lolwhatever sites all the time and I love them, but my computer got a virus from one of the "icanhascheezburger" sites a couple weeks back. It was "virtumonde" which, although I didn't have any problems this time, I've had tons of problems with in the past. Be careful.

I frequently feel victimized by your insightful writing. Shame on you!

If she were in a healthcare-providing position, she would say that because it is against her principles, she will refuse service to any Republicans who are in need.

Read that "Meeting for Worship" link and see how tortuous that must be for hyper kids! I, myself, would have probably started pounding my head on the floor after five minutes.

I was going to comment on the fact that it seems every prostitute has to be portrayed as emotionally scarred somehow. Can't a well-adjusted (whatever that is) person become a prostitute too?

But now I think of it in a different way. Maybe the rule that our personal traumas determine our career choices is universal. Therefore I'd like to see in-depth reporting on how people's emotional development causes them to become garbage men and data-entry specialists. Why should prostitutes get all the press?

I think there's a bogus assumption in this article: that any candidate for a position will be turned down if he or she does not have a squeaky clean past. I mean no offense to the author of this piece, but that's the kind of polarized thinking that's screwed up this country for the past ten years. Either you're completely clean or you're unacceptably dirty. Bah.

Clearly Obama wants to know the background details to avoid any controversy, but if he chooses to bypass people with a few embarrassing blog responses then he isn't the realist that I voted for. He's being careful, and I'm glad he's careful about his decisions.

For shame! Or perhaps they were a little too wide to support your thesis?

They don't kiss their children with those mouths, do they? Do they have any @#$%ing children?

She is, by all evidence, closer to God than Warren.

How will the bars survive?!

allow us to deny medical treatment intended to prolong the lives of asshole Republicans? 'Cause then I'd support it.

But I don't understand one thing. Does the blogging come before the child sacrifice, between the child sacrifice and the orgy, or after the orgy?

Hamas launches homemade rockets into Israel, and once in a while an Israeli gets killed. However, after every rocket launch, Israel rains fiery death onto Gaza and kills dozens if not hundreds of Palestinians.

So why am I supposed consider Hamas the bad guys here? Israel's response is always amazingly over-the-top disproportionate to whatever Hamas did to them, I have no sympathy for them anymore. How many Hamas attacks do you have to aggregate to equal the 200 Palestinians killed by Israel today?

I don't expect Obama to share my views, but I do expect him to put an end to the "Israel can do whatever it wants" policy that has arisen from US's cowardice in confronting Israel.

Cynthia McKinney is anti-semitic because her FATHER said those things against the Jews? Is this a typo, or has the "If you say anything bad about Israel you're anti-semitic" witchhunt really gone this far to blame the daughter for the sins of the father?

I know a lot of NM state employees who will be very disappointed by this. They were really looking forward to Richardson leaving the state.

I don't agree with everything you write, but I'm damn glad you are writing about these issues. Each of your posts is more thorough than the previous one.

My opinion: I've given up hope that any sane resolution to this situation will ever be found. I've come to accept the Israeli-Palestinian conflict like a force of nature. In the same way that violent weather and diseases will always claim lives, people will always kill each other in the Middle East. It's been happening since before I was born, and it will happen long after I die, perhaps going on forever.

Palestinians win by surviving, and Israel loses by killing innocents. If Israel sees violence as the only solution, then they should be prepared to take it to the logical conclusion and kill everyone in the Gaza strip. As long as one person survives, there will be resistance which Israel will interpret as terrorism.

The way he's acting like an innocent man just proves that he's guilty!

By the way, I don't know if Richardson has a lawyer, but he has a personal trainer. I kid you not!

Or maybe he's changed his middle name to "9/11" so he doesn't need to repeat himself anymore.