These four races were more cherry-picked than Bush's Iraq War intelligence and just as biased.

Strickland/Blackwell is hardly a convincing case as Blackwell, though black, played a prominent role in suppressing the black vote in Ohio in the 2004 presidential election.

Steele/Cardin is equally flawed. Blackwell and Steele were black REPUBLICANS in a year in which Republicans were decimated across the board.

Healey/Patrick is problematic for the argument as well. It completely ignores the fact that Healey is female, which could have been a factor. The final numbers fell either within the margin of error of the polls or were not off by much.

Ford/Corker ignores the fact that the numbers fall within the margin of error. Tennessee also has some peculiarities. West Tennessee is "Blue", East Tennessee is bright red, and Middle Tennessee is purple (or more like a red circle around blue Nashville). There were voting issues in Memphis. And Ford was seriously hampered by the fact that his father and uncles have been involved in serious ethical scandals. While voters in West Tennessee know their Fords apart, I am not convinced that my neighbors in East Tennessee could separate Harold Ford, Jr from his father and uncles who all faced corruption scandals. Tennessee is also the one of the brightest of red states. Tennessee is the heart of the Bible Belt and the birthplace of the KKK. The culture war arguments that fell flat in most of the nation still resonated here in 2006 (and 2008). Corker and the Republicans also ran the most shameless campaign in the nation in 2006. Remember this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAgUvJWijag ?

This was a flawed argument by an admitted partisan and had no place on Salon. I don't mind seeing the opposing view on the pages of Salon. The willingness to listen to both sides of an argument is one of the fundamental differences between liberals and conservatives. However, the "opposing view" should meet certain bare minimum factual/methodological criteria before being hoisted upon readers. Mr. Greener's article failed that test.

This story set my bullshit meter sailing off the dial when it first popped up last night. I just hope that she is prosecuted to the full extent of the law for this nonsense. This goes beyond filing a false police report, given the timing and the racial and political implications. She deserves the maximum sentence possible.

This was just a sloppy, poorly written article. Based on the article, one would think that Apple completely ditched FW 400 in favor of USB 2.0 and that, in doing so they were setting USB 2.0 as the new industry standard. Given that 2.0 has been around a while and is everywhere (all my digital cameras and other peripherals use it), that makes no sense.

Was it a poor attempt at satire? Was it just missing some key information that would have let the article makes sense?

If this is the best that Salon can do with The Machinist in the wake of Mr. Manjoo's departure, then perhaps it is time to close shop.

An endorsement by Colin Powell would indeed matter. While I and many like me considering him tainted by his activities in Bush's first term (especially the U.N. speech), that view is not necessarily shared by the roughly 8% of voters who say that they haven't yet made up their minds about which candidate they will vote for.

Tainted though he may be, many people think of the First Gulf War when they think about Powell. Not a lot of Americans were really paying that much attention to the U.N. speech in which Powell sullied his name.

McCain shamefully played the special needs card. I was furious, but I think that you are incorrect in your specific attack. I believe that McCain was referencing the fact that Palin has a nephew with autism when he said that. He should have made that clearer. Well, he shouldn't have tried to use the kids for political points at all, but if he was going to, he should have made clear that he was talking about the nephew, not about Trig.