about the 18 million cracks in the highest glass ceiling.

I was an Edwards supporter in this contest who switched to Obama relatively early when it was clear his race had lost momentum, and voted for him on Super Tuesday. Some Edwards supporters displayed the same sense of ugly loyalty that involves attacking anyone with a sense of unity or pragmatism, but at a much lower level compared to the ugliness of the Clinton campaign and its supporters.

I have always maintained that I would happily support the Democratic nominee, be it Edwards, Obama, or Clinton. But the increasing belligerence of the Clinton campaign and the ugliness of its supporters is a major turnoff. Compare the Clinton blog, where thousands of posts proudly rail against Obama (who is almost always charmingly referred to as "BO"), while mildly critical comments of Clinton are promptly deleted. Now it is true that political blogs tend to bring out the worst chorus of blindly loyal supporters. However I have found both Edwards and Obama to be not just great orators (and here I think Edwards is stronger, but that Obama has improved and even taken lines from Edwards' playbook), but that they are remarkably conciliatory, unity-oriented, and unwilling to take cheap shots at Clinton.

Clinton can blame this on sexism until the cows come home, but it only points out her own faults. She ran a nasty campaign that hurt the party and hurt the country, and has done nothing until now (nominally) to dissuade her ugly army of die-hard supporters who are swearing never to vote for "BO" and to instead vote for McCain or write her in.

If we can blame Bush 2000 on Nader, then if we get Bush 2.0 in 2008, we can blame it on Clinton (although to be sure, the true blame belongs to the entire electorate). Let's hope she redeems herself by campaigning for Obama just as hard as she campaigned for herself.

In any event, let's hope that this isn't necessary and that we get a President Obama. I would say that all signs point to it being so, but after 2004 I don't even want to comment on it until it's all over.

And as usual, the U.S.A. is the an international obstacle to progress on this front.

We need to reverse policies on international aid for family planning, and in particular programs and education to enable people to keep families SMALL. We're getting to the stage where the only way out would be either draconian measures like a universal one-child policy, because nature is already starting to take its own measures to reduce our numbers by very unpleasant means.

The population pyramid scheme is already collapsing. Some people think that no number of people is too many people. But all the major, intractable problems we're seeing in the world today come down to the fact that we've already overshot earth's carrying capacity with too many damn humans.

It's time to depopulate, and fast. Nature is already working on killing us off in unpleasant ways, and it will only get worse if we don't get serious about limiting our numbers voluntarily.

I have little patience for your inanity, and little time for your own flipfloppery, but it is grossly unfair of you to attribute partisan internet flamewars to Obama. Turn the light on Clinton, you will find that the comments on her own campaign website consisted of >50% unfiltered vitriol worse than what you are citing coming from so-called Obamaniacs, e.g. calling him BO, emphasizing his dreaded Middle Name, and other outright racism and smears.

Also, don't it was a Clinton supporter who spread the libelous rumor that Michelle Obama was ranting against "whitey" in her church, completely false of course.

Obama himself of course has had nothing but good things to say about Clinton. Even during the "bitter" campaign moments he was rather restrained. So if you are going to abandon the party to the Republicans, maybe you ought to check whether or not you're doing it for frivolous, unfair reasons blinded by your own partisan fervor. It would be unfair to blame Clinton for all the sins of her followers, and believe me you can find one just as bad or worse to match on either side, so why do this to Obama?

By the way, Obama wasn't originally my top choice for nominee either. But I'm excited about him like I haven't been by a presidential nominee since I've been eligible to vote.

Joan, this is George Carlin you're talking about. Where he's going next he's going to be worm food, same as all of us in a few years, and he wouldn't have you think otherwise. That's exactly the type of sentimental dreck that Carlin made a living off of skewering.

And Arne, sorry you felt you wasted $100, and I haven't had the pleasure of seeing Carlin perform live, but I watched bootlegs of his last few HBO specials and I thought they were great. I like my Carlin dark and bitter, and the more uncomfortable it makes people, the better it is.

Not a 527. A PAC. MoveOn just closed their 527, which hasn't been active in years.

There's a difference between a 527 and a political action committee, although they are similar in that they must be independent from any political campaign. A PAC is limited in the amount of money that it can take from an individual, while a 527 is not. A PAC can advocate for or against individual candidates for office, while a 527 cannot (or at least is not supposed to).

The two are often confused, and many times a group will form similarly-named 527 and PAC organizations that are nominally independent but involve the same principals and so are pretty well coordinated in fact, as used to be the case with MoveOn.