Poco complains:

I think a really funny strip could be made of Charlie Rangel's 2 million dollar (of our money) "donation" to the library at City College of New York. What's so funny is that he is using your money to build a library that will be called "The Rangel Library". That is really fodder for satire, don't you think?

What Rangel is doing and what Bush has done cannot be compared in any way. If a politician (Rangel, Bush) pushes through funding for a needed library, then, no, I do not have any problem with seeing it named after him. What has Bush accomplished? To tell the truth, I would really like to see his "accomplishments" named after him: "The George W. Bush War," "The George W. Bush Failed Katrina Response and Destruction of New Orleans," "The George W. Bush Footdragging on Environmental Catastrophes," "The George W. Bush Massive Deficit." Feel free to contribute your own suggestions.

Ok, you've proved that a new Apple holds its value better than a new PC. But the very same data also demonstrate that a used PC can be a much better value than any other computer out there. I'm still happily pounding away on the keyboard of the six-year-old IBM ThinkPad R31 I inherited from my wife three years ago. It probably cost $1500 new (her company paid for it); I got it for the price of a new hard drive after the original one bit the dust (roughly $100 and, let's say, an interesting afternoon). How can any Apple beat that? The best part is that installing the new hard drive cleared out whatever viruses might have been on the drive in the past. It has worked perfectly well (and has remained bug-free) ever since. Ok, it has one drawback: though it has a dvd drive, I can't play movies on it. Crappy video adapter. Then again, that "limitation" forces me to avoid the temptation of vegging out in front of the screen...

The key point here: you only need as much computer as you are going to use. I'd never use anything but a mac to edit a movie... but I'd never edit a movie, anyway. An used PC is as good for typing (or surfing the web) as the latest speed demon might be. For word processing and email, an old clunker is the best bargain you'll find.

The Senate's "60-vote requirement" may be a fiction, but the "millionaire requirement" (if you aren't a millionaire, forget about running for the Senate) is very real. How many of our "popularly elected" multimillionaire Senators actually hold the political opinions that they voice so forcefully on the campaign trail or during the hot-air fests that precede these ceremonial, "register our displeasure" Senate votes?

Seriously. I'm sure someone else has already commented on "the absence" by now, but... what the...? Can Salon not afford the extra pixels for a teensy photo of Bill with all his fellow potential "first ladies"? (A title that sticks in the craw....)

According to my right-wing friends, liberals don't just "hate Bush," they "hate America."

As the first letter on this post has already pointed out, I don't really "hate" Bush at all -- the word implies a much deeper psychological involvement than I actually feel, and as the opposite of "love" implies a certain respect for the man. I would say, instead, that I despise him. Or maybe loathe is the right word. But definitely not hate.

In any case, I spend less time thinking about the little man in Crawford than I do looking forward to the potential for good times ahead, when real change will once again be possible and people of good will can work together to help out all Americans. 420 days to go and counting!

All I can say is that Republicans are serial offenders when it comes to push-polling. In the lead-up to the 2006 Michigan gubernatorial election, I received no fewer than three push-poll calls that tried to dish out scurrilous "facts" about the Democratic candidate, Jennifer Granholm, while heaping praise (in question form) on the GOP candidate, Amway heir Dick DeVos. The calls only stopped after I got a letter about them printed in the local paper. I suppose Dems commit push-polling now and then, but have they done so lately in any major electoral contest?

Good to see someone showing a smidgen of humor in this campaign. The Chuck Norris spot would have seemed funnier if I hadn't been forwarded the same jokes by my humor-challenged old high school friends, repeatedly, over the past couple of years. Maybe Huckabee just got internet service. Or maybe his base (yes, all your base do belong to us) have the same memory problems as my old high school buddies, making Chuck Norris jokes fresh and funny again every time they hear them.

Anyway, the politician with the all-time best sense of humor (as far as I've been able to see) is Bob Dole. Having a sense of humor is nice, but it's no qualification for office.

Thanks to Paul Dirks for pointing to Klein's remarkably unselfconscious confessional article,

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1670184,00.html

For me, the most telling line in the article is this: "Is Merle Haggard indicative of a larger movement among his white male country brethren? This is a key to the next election." The idea that conservative white males, who make up no more than eighteen percent of the electorate (generously estimated), are "a key to the next election" is what drives two-thirds of all punditry in this country today.

White males are the Sunnis of contemporary America. We have long since ceased to constitute an electoral majority, but far too many of us still think and want to act as if we own the country.

What more can I say? (Nothing, until I stop laughing!)

No way Headless the Chicken is better than Chappy! Chappy rules!

Thanks for the laughs...