It's very simple, people: vote all Republicans out. I don't care who they are. If they're Republican, they carry water for the Bush team, and they've got to go. A vote against a Republican is a vote against Karl Rove.

Go do your duty, everybody.

I realize it's in a flyover state (and therefore isn't worth noting), but the St. Paul, MN, mayoral race is practically a direct referendum on Bush. Incumbent Democrat mayor Randy Kelly last year endorsed Bush, and it looks like he's going to pay for that endorsement with his job.

This story, in all the major news outlets today, is complete bunk. Gubernatorial and mayoral elections are never referenda on the president, especially in an off year election. Example: North Carolina last year votes overwhelmingly for Bush while at the same time for Dem for Governor. Vermont votes overwhelmingly against Bush, while at the same time for a Rep Governor.

This storyline gives voters no credit for being able to differentiate between state/local and federal government, and should one of the Republicans win in either NJ or VA it gives the White House a positive spin on a story. Whereas if both Dems win, the White House can say, well NJ is a blue state, and VA has a popular outgoing Democratic governor, so they have nothing to lose by trying to put this spin out there.

You need to look beyand the east coast for a change.

In St. Paul (that's in Minnesota which is the center part of the nation. It's ok to look at a map), the incumbent mayor, Randy Kelly, is about ready to get voted out of office by a challenger. One of the main reasons is because the came out in support Bush last year.

Well, I just spent a little while composing a brilliant letter explaining why the Republicons didn't even field a candidate for mayor in today's election in New Haven, where Dubya was born. The Cons are only even contesting five alderman seats out of 30, and they only have one incumbent alderman. New Haven loathes Bush, and wishes that the rest of this country would realize what we learned when we had to bury his diapers in our landfill.

However, the letter that I wrote was erased by Salon's submission system. This is the second time I've lost a post. What happens is that you log in, write your letter, and then if you've taken too much time you have to log in again. And voila, your original letter has been lost, and the back arrow can't recover it. This is a dumb-ass system. At the very least, someone who clicks on "Publish my letter" should have their work automatically saved before having to log in again. Until this fix is made (which should take your programmer about 30 minutes), the system is user-unfriendly. Please repair it, Salon.

I learned a long time ago to copy every post to my clipboard before submitting. There's no other way to guarantee you won't lose it. While getting logged out like that is indeed a pity, it's also quite possible for the net to simply lose your post with no fault on the part of the destination website.

Yes, Pyrian is right, anyone who posts should probably make a habit of copying their text to their clipboard before hitting the submit button, just to be safe. Of course, sometimes even the most savvy of us forget, and stuff happens. What I'm saying, though, is that the Salon message board exacerbates the problem through bad programming, and could easily be fixed. (I didn't spell it out before, because I was afraid of getting timed-out again if I spent too much time writing. Here's the dime version.)

1) The person is asked for a username/ password.

2) The person writes a message in the text box.

Current version of Salon's message board:

3) When the person is done and hits "Publish my letter," the program checks to see if the person's session has expired. If not, they move on to step 5. If the session has expired, they move on to

4) The person is asked for a password. Upon providing the password, they are returned to step 2.

5) The letter is published. Notice the flaw in this flow chart?

Proposed version to improve Salon's message board.

3) When the person is done and hits "Publish my letter," the data in the form is saved to a variable - call it "saved_message". Then the program checks to see if the person's session has expired. If not, they move on to step 5.

4) The person is asked for a password. Upon providing the password, the computer checks the content of the variable "saved_message" and passes that information to the Salon server.

5) The letter is published. Notice how one simple fix has greatly improved the likelihood that the writer's data will not be lost?

Please, Salon, don't assume that all your users practice the virtuous habit of saving all our work all the time. It's a minor fix.

Ok, now I'll copy, save, and publish...