Glenn: love the article (and I wish Joan Walsh would read it before she starts channeling Rove again). But please drop the hypercorrected "whomevers". "[W]homever the nominee is going to be." "[W]homever appears to be the loser." That's twice in the space of three sentences! The subject of a clause is a subject (i.e. whoever, not whomever), regardless of whether the clause itself is in turn the object of another clause. It sounds as grating as the hypercorrected "between you and I."

Pendatically yours,

DLF

Jeremiah Wright will not hurt Barack Obama.

The rightwing media machine, which will hammer this pseudo-issue until people are sick of hearing about it, will not hurt Barack Obama.

Handwringing liberal pundits who repeat rightwing talking points as if they were actual issues, not irrelevant mudslinging attacks, may hurt Barack Obama.

Or, maybe they will figure out the right's game and stop playing it.

And maybe pigs will fly.

Joan: please return to actual issues. It isn't as if the country is doing so well that we can afford another four years of misrule and obfuscation. Jeremiah Wright is not an issue.

From your post:

"But the fact is he has to deal with it. You're all furious at me for focusing on Wright as though the issues would go away if I didn't."

How odd that the big networks can ignore the scandal about their use of government shills as "military experts" in their coverage of Iraq, effectively making that issue "go away."

How odd that McCain can ignore the questions about Hagee and make that issue "go away."

How odd that only handwringing liberal pundits are forced, absolutely forced, to keep rightwing talking points alive as "issues" because they cannot possibly, possibly "go away" if you simply refuse to pay attention to their irrelevant distractions.

Back to issues, please!

I'm sure some focus group somewhere cued in the Republican talking heads to the fact that "An-War" sounds uglier and more threatening than the bucolic "Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."

If slash-and-burn Republicans had been in charge a century ago, we would now be drilling and strip-mining YNP ("Why-Nip") instead of enjoying Yellowstone National Park.

Please use the park's real name from now on and leave the ugly acronyms to the oil company shills (Bush included).

= too good to be true!

There is absolutely no question of what he is saying in the original (as I'm sure anyone who can read lips will be able to confirm instantly). The second instance in particular: Kantor clearly states, "how would you like to be in the White House." How anyone could "interpret" that as a racial slur is beyond me. Nothing of what he says has anything whatsoever to do with disrespecting Indianans.

Whoever posted this to YouTube is slime. And, to be perfectly honest, it is pretty slimy of Salon to even suggest there might be some substance here.

Final point: enough, already, of trying to slime candidates by tying them to other people. Let's listen to what they have to say themselves.

...but I'll have to wait anyway. I hope LED "light bulbs" become available at retail stores (Target, supermarket, local hardware store) over the next few years.

So far, all I have seen is a few night lights and, at the hardware store, a small 2-watt LED fixture designed to light up a kitchen counter (according to the packaging). Seemed quite reasonable at about $13, but... when I took it home and tried it, the light was so ghastly bluish that it made the counter look like a slab at the morgue. Sorry, LED designers, back to the drawing board with you. (When I returned it, I picked up a 0.25 watt night light that works fine and uses 1/16 of the wattage of the incandescent it replaced).

Someday... soon... I hope... I'll be able to buy an LED "bulb" that will screw into a standard light fixture and give some approximation of that warm, diffuse glow we love.

If we had a national energy policy that made any sense, the US gov't would have spent a couple of billion on solving this problem instead of... you know what. LED's have the potential of slashing US electricity demand, but so far that's just a potential.

I might have answered your question already.

Note, I don't mind the new CFL's at all -- I have them all over the house, and find their light pleasant & natural. Maybe I've just gotten used to them. But imagine: even I find LED's (at least the ones on the market now) too bluish, harsh, and ghastly. Sorry, the ones I've seen are just not ready for prime time yet.

On the positive side: LED's come in a variety of colors, strengths, and styles (unlike CFLs, which vary within a fairly narrow band). So there is hope that someday--soon, I hope--some engineer or designer will get it right.

Somebody help me understand George Frost's argument:

1) The right thing to do would be to raise gas taxes by $2 or so.

2) Since that can't happen (dang those spineless politicians), the next best thing to do is to cut gas taxes to 0.

3) Cutting the transportation infrastructure budget by $9 billion won't matter because -- oh, wow, look at that!! Sorry, what were we talking about?

... on when Las Vegas will get the news about global warming. (Or "climate change" or whatever euphemism you want to use; maybe "global climate catastrophe" would work.)

Try to imagine a carbon-neutral Las Vegas "gaming industry." Now try to imagine pigs flying. The second is a lot easier, isn't it?