For years now the Republicans have been claiming at every opportunity that "this is a center-right country" -- and that theirs is the party that ought naturally to be in power. But no sooner does an actual center-right candidate run under the GOP banner than the right-wingers who actually control the party revolt, calling that center-right candidate (in Malkin's words) "a high-taxing, Big Labor-pandering, bigger government radical."

Every time I hear the "center-right" claim, I point out the logical and obvious truth: if center + right = majority, it is equally true that center + left = majority. The right has just rejected the center in a big way.

Question now: will the left accept a center-left alliance? GOP rejectionism on health care has made the Democrats the de facto majority, center-left party of the US. It is distasteful to purists -- I'd like to see a single-payer system, too -- but them's politics. If things keep going this way -- and if the left learns the right-wing trick of framing their issues as centrist (there's a big if for you) -- I don't see how the GOP can recover on a national level until they get over their little right-wing fit.

The New Salon format has 6 columns. On the comix page, you're using 3 for the comic, 2 for "In the News," and 1 for "Currently in Salon." Nobody seems happy. The comic is WAY too small; on a small screen, hardly more than a thumbnail. How about, instead: the full comic in fulll 6-column banner across the top of the page, and put "In the News" and "Currently in Salon" -- AND links to other recent comix (where'd they go?) -- UNDER the comic. Is that too hard to engineer?

I'm thinking of changing my signature name to "The Customer Is Always Right," just to remind y'all! Thanks for listening... I hope...

He pleaded or pled guilty. The slimy little weasel.

Was it just preadolescent me? The thing that I loved about The Prisoner -- the thing no one has mentioned -- was that it was funny. The perfect parody of a spy serious. (From "they've given you a number and taken 'way your name" in the lyrics to the ludicrously named Secret Agent Man to the anguished and defiant "I am not a number, I am a free man!" in The Prisoner -- who could read that as anything but satire?) At the time, I couldn't have imagined anyone taking the series seriously. Of course it was "non-linear": that was the fun of it! All 1960s humor was non-linear, wasn't it?

Is the remake even remotely funny? Was it made by anyone with a scrap of a sense of humor? Somehow I doubt it. Maybe I'll just wait for the remake of "Peek-a-boo, the Movie."

I have not read Pollan's book, so I don't know whether he deals with this consequence of the US overproduction of corn, but too much cheap US corn + NAFTA = undercutting traditional Mexican corn farmers. Tens of thousands (at least) of corn farmers have been thrown off the land in Mexico since NAFTA corn rules went into effect 15 years or so ago. (This is one of the reasons behind the bump in immigration from Mexico to the US over the same period.) Lower corn prices has had little effect on the urban poor in Mexico; the government subsidizes low-price tortillas. But the effect on the rural poor -- and on Mexico's food security -- has been devastating. Mexico, of course, is where corn was first domesticated several thousand years ago, so it is also the country that has -- or had -- the greatest genetic diversity in corn varieties. At least up to the recent past, every valley in parts of central Mexico grew a different set of corn varieties, each adapted to its own microclimate. If corn is in trouble due to climate change, that is where the solution will be found -- if it isn't too late.

In my ideal world, scientists and economists whose salaries were paid for by us, i.e., the government, would be conducting the research necessary to come up with a good answer to this very specific question.

That's a great start, but in my ideal world, federally funded researchers (whether salaried employees of the CDC or, perhaps preferably, university researchers with federal research grants) would develop the drugs themselves. The government would license their manufacture to any and all manufacturers that asked, at a licensing rate that would reimburse the treasury for the expense of the overall research program.

We (i.e. the government) already provide a lot of the funding for the basic research behind drug development, but we don't require drug makers to limit their profits as a condition for using publicly funded research. Everybody in general would be better off with less profit (certainly with less advertising) and with more research in health fields. Result: cheaper, generic-like drugs for all, from the beginning. Downside: a lot of angry pharma lobbyists.