Some in the media are criticizing Hillary’s performance as displayed on the Sunday talk shows this past weekend. The primary criticism that I have heard is that she appeared on all five but made no news. In my mind, and I am sure in Hillary and her campaign’s, that makes for a successful day.

Original thinking or secondary research?

Many of the web blogs that I follow are of a type wherein their contributors excel in reading various media reports, the output of other sources, blogs, etc. Often it is a practice on such blogs for an author to transcribe large portions of another’s work and lace it together with fairly innocuous, segue remarks …usually, a sentence or two of little original content. While this may be a service to those who are unable to find original articles for themselves, the procedure adds little to original thinking.

Far left wing of the Democratic Party must decide which is more important: 1) Failing to elect a President that strictly follows the far left puritan doctrine or, 2) Electing another President from the Bush community. Everyone on the right of center is (completely) intolerable. Some Democratic candidates have expressed broader based views than is permissible in left land. So which will it be in 2008? A president from the Right who is antithetical to every interest of the Center and the Left? Or, will it be a president who will preside over policies that are mostly acceptable to the Center and the Left? No candidate is perfect.

The sky is falling. The sky is falling. There is no escape. We are all doomed. The United States is going to hell in a hand basket. There is no way to stop our inevitable destruction. Face it. Anything we do will turn out badly. There is no hope.

Give me a break.

Each and every day one or the other of us puts into play another theory on our demise, each prediction forecasts our imminent collapse. I suppose that we are expected to panic, to jump off a bridge or a tall building. But, next day after each such rant, almost all of us awaken, the sun rises in the east, and another day gets underway. Life goes on.

and opened its website to anyone and without charge.

Back when the NYT decided to charge $49.95 (or some figure) for access to its most often read columnists, I thought it a moronic journalistic move and an even stupider business move. Obviously, the journalist want the widest audience possible to read their words of wisdom. There was no journalistic justification to limit that audience. Unfortunately, the business wieners gained the upper hand and shut of the reference source.

now, the campaign guy for John Edwards, in an appearance on Chris Matthew’s Soap Box today, floated an idea that, apparently, the Edwards campaign will use to prod fellow Democratic candidates. The idea: Unhook all Democratic Presidential candidates (indeed all Democrats running for office) from the inside the beltway lobbyist. The purpose, in Trippe’s view, is to raise the Democratic candidates to a higher moral plane and put the Republicans on defense, defending what most American’s view as immoral, probably the fraudulent injection of lobbying money into the various campaigns. Trippe thinks that this will strike a harmonious chord with the voting public and thus gain the high road for Democrats. Maybe it would, but I doubt that he will get many takers.

A young University of Florida student was tasered yesterday by campus police when attempting to ask a question of John Kerry. Kerry was speaking at a free forum at the University’s O’Connell Center (Home of the two-time defending NCAA Basketball champions, the Florida Gators). The Gator championships, 2006 and 2007 in basketball and the 2006 championship in football are high points for Florida. The tasering of the undergrad student, yesterday, is one of the University’s and consequently, Florida’s lowest points. It was a strike against the freedom of speech.

today with my feet dangling in the pool, sipping one of the heavenly brews, watching the Gators demolish the Tennessee Volunteers [52-20]…. a beautiful day, about 90 degrees, bright sunshine, with not a golfer in sight…. that beautiful Florida sunshine ablaze.