Top Comments 5.5.08 Primary-Free Port before the Storm

Ever feel this way? Especially on the night before all-important primary contests?

I do and I think I'm not alone. So come on in and rest your feet, pour a glass of your favorite poison, smoke 'em if you got 'em.

I got a few items to share. First up, my MAN, Mark Morford - his column last Friday caused me to almost pee my pants. He's good that way - never a dry seat.

10 ways to blow your tax rebate: Gas, video games, meditation, booze. What, you were planning on paying bills? As if

Here's the bad news: Your little recession-deflecting tax rebate? No rebate at all. Not even close.

It's more like this: You've been continuously mugged and beaten and robbed blind for the past seven years straight, and as you lay there on the cold, hard economic ground, bleeding and gasping and wondering what the hell happened to your vacation time and your health care plan and your mortgage payment, your attackers scoff and leer and toss a couple of bloodstained nickels on your pulverized face and mutter, here sucker, have some bus fare, and then they cackle and stomp away with all your loot and dignity and hope, back to the White House from whence they came.

What, too harsh? Not really. It's a lovely feeling, made even more sweetly ironic by the fact that Congress will likely soon shove through another $108 billion in war funds like a giant gallstone through our collective fiscal urethra. Right there, that's about 500 bucks for each and every adult human in America, baristas and Baptists and NASCAR fans alike.

Do you see? Your "economic stimulus" check is meaningless, an empty gesture, a trifling crumb of recompense after robbing you blind via insane gas prices, infrastructure meltdowns, massive failed wars that aren't really wars. Thanks for the bogus check, Dubya, now where can I buy a sliver of our missing national dignity? Oh, that's right. ...

Some sad news to report - a brave Virginian has passed.

Mildred Loving, matriarch of interracial marriage - RIP

Mildred Loving, a black woman whose challenge to Virginia's ban on interracial marriage led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling striking down such laws nationwide, has died, her daughter said Monday. Peggy Fortune said Loving, 68, died Friday at her home in rural Milford.

Loving and her white husband, Richard, changed history in 1967 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their right to marry. The ruling struck down laws banning racially mixed marriages in at least 17 states. They had married in Washington in 1958, when she was 18. Returning to their Virginia hometown, they were arrested within weeks and convicted on charges of "cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth," according to their indictments.

The couple avoided a year in jail by agreeing to a sentence mandating that they immediately leave Virginia. They moved to Washington and launched a legal challenge a few years later. After the Supreme Court ruled, the couple returned to Virginia ...Richard Loving died in 1975 in a car accident that also injured his wife.

In a rare interview with The Associated Press last June, Loving said she wasn't trying to change history - she was just a girl who once fell in love with a boy.

Awww... that's so sweet.

My good friend and colleague, James Loewen, continues to work at his latest project:

The second issue of The Sundown Town News is now available. This issue, as with all issues of The Sundown Town News, includes a call for action. I hope after reading my cover article "Legal Action Needed," you will feel compelled to become an active participant in the abolition of sundown towns.

After reading the newsletter, please spend some time checking out the Sundown Towns website, where I am developing a clearinghouse for research on sundown towns.

Yours in the struggle for justice in the U.S. – Jim Loewen

Jim is a national treasure - I spent some time with him a few years back examining sundown town histories in Appalachia. He's a very stimulating road trip partner with an incredible lust for research and correcting historical fictions.

What's the weirdest thing I read today? Had to be this...
Who should MDs let die in a pandemic? Report offers answers

Doctors know some patients needing lifesaving care won't get it in a flu pandemic or other disaster. The gut-wrenching dilemma will be deciding who to let die.

Now, an influential group of physicians has drafted a grimly specific list of recommendations for which patients wouldn't be treated. They include the very elderly, seriously hurt trauma victims, severely burned patients and those with severe dementia...

The proposed guidelines are designed to be a blueprint for hospitals "so that everybody will be thinking in the same way" when pandemic flu or another widespread health care disaster hits ... The idea is to try to make sure that scarce resources - including ventilators, medicine and doctors and nurses - are used in a uniform, objective way...

Yikes! Don't know what else to say - a Malthusian solution, anyone?

Got this today from MoveOn:

We've been trying to come up with some ways to make it clear to everyone just how similar McCain is to Bush.

So we did some research and built a new online game called The Bush-McCain Challenge.  Kind of like the Pepsi Challenge, if you remember that.
Thing is, it's way harder to tell them apart than we thought. Can you test it out here, and tell us if you think it's too hard?

After you take the initial test, you get a bonus round - which is smarter? McCain or this carrot?

ON TO TOP COMMENTS!
First up, nominations sent in to our TopComments AT gmail.com account. Send yours before 9:30 pm each evening and be sure to include your UID.

From crashing vor:
All wry twinger asks is a little fairness. If Bill Clinton was the first black president...
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From vertexoflife:  
kath25 offers to donate money for recs, go and rec her! =)  Cinco De Obama!
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From Nolan:
JeffLieber, on making the Netroots Nation convention (and seeing Lessig):  Very much looking forward to all of this, but....
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From sardonyx:

HoundDog wants a systemic integration of our national and global security plan from Democrats to counter the neocons, and has other ideas as well, in his comment from Leftcenterlibertarian's diary I was wrong, President Carter was right.

StudentThinker points out that Wal-Mart and major department stores aren't all that far apart in how they drive their employees to make more money.

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My own finds!
In Inky99's diary, Scott Ritter - "virtual guarantee" of Iran strike, the long-term neocon project by jedley, Links to Seymour Hersh Iran articles by obiterdictum, I've read a great deal of the responses on here by The British Observer

Best magazine cover ever: and when history is written, by bubbanomics - that one never gets old!

Mental picture I did NOT need: Chris Matthews... by Internets

REC this comment - Cinco De Obama! by kath25 - make kath25 dig deep into her wallet! ;-) (Yeah - in case you missed it above, I'm repeating it!)

Sample wingnuttery letter to CNN: LOL by billysumday

Why hasn't William Jefferson endorsed yet? he keeps checking his freezer by strengthANDwisdom

Love it when new candidates come by: Working for Senate by Larry LaRocco and this reply: Welcome back, Larry by mcjoan

On constant media chatter (not to mention chatter here) on the ups and downs of the campaign, Re: by mentaldebris

What's wrong with youngsters anyway? Get off my damned lawn and quit dissing my music! You know, I thought of Stevie Wonder as kind of by steve davis

On the Obama campaign throughout: Steady, consisent, undeterred by WahooMatt

Great campaign to feed the Obama volunteers in IN and NC (yeah, I'm diary-pimpimg): Vincennes Info: by mamamorgaine, I've got Charlotte, NC taken care of already by Fineena, and This is so funny by Mothership.

On the Democratic Party's sleep-walking and self-destruction: Clinton's campaign was inherently by Lois - I have to agree.

I had the same problem: I couldn't open the link last time by zozie - Yes, Hillary by slippytoad rare photos of the aftermath in Hiroshima. Warning: very graphic illustration of why nuclear weaponry is immoral.

Of Clinton's behavior on the campaign trail: Surprised she hasn't resorted to belching by Gator1980

Monsanto = chemical criminals? I am a chemist, and it is much more by Translator

Whassup with Hillary's brain? "If the DEMs used the GOP rules, I'd be the by deMemedeMedia (and a great reply by Crofton Park).

Can radio and democracy coexist? Doomed from the start. by Ralphdog

People believe crazy things by Change Is Coming - that particular crazy person could have been one of my siblings. And same for the Anti-Christ rhetoric spewing forth lately, Since when ...   by fourthcornerman
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TOP MOJO - thanks, BeninSC!
Top Mojo - excluding search-identifiable tip jars and first diary comments (top 22 tonight of each plus ties):

1 congressman from Kentucky by Ajax the Greater - 248
2 thank you! by Matt Stoller - 220
3 The first diary pisses me off by dedmonds - 148
4 Even for them, she is in a class of her own n/t by bwintx - 144
5 Thank you, Mr. Chandler by sistermoon - 114
6 Hey, Ben -- hang around a bit tonight by Seneca Doane - 92
7 sadly, we have already by clammyc - 91
8 Yeah!  Everybody Sucks! by MLDB - 90
9 Thanks, Rep. Chandler! by itskevin - 88
10 Thank You by BlackBox - 85
11 Ben... by Rian Fike - 80
12 Inky, I assure you by Yosef 52 - 80
13 you are preaching to the choir on that one by clammyc - 80
14 It's a wonder you get anything done, since you by lineatus - 79
15 umm, will Chris Mathews ever shut up? by notquitedelilah - 79
16 We can and we will! by BillyZoom - 76
17 Cinco De Obama! by kath25 - 75
18 BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!! by jenontheshore - 74
19 h/t by Matt Stoller - 72
20 Welcome to the by Lisa Lockwood - 70
21 Good to be back by Larry LaRocco - 66
22 Thank you Ben. Remember, we have your back by Engine 08 - 64
23 no thank you for your service to our country by Cronk - 64
24 Holding Dorothy and Tommie by sheddhead - 61
25 This war is ruining this country by CocoaLove - 60
26 Thanks, Al. by icebergslim - 60
27 It's not too late. ; ) by acuppajo - 58
28 It's an honor by chicago minx - 57
29 good point by Matt Stoller - 56
30 thanks inky by decitect - 56

Top Mojo - everything included:

1 the old tipparillos by Inky99 - 591
2 Tips by dedmonds - 572
3 Tip Jar by davidsirota - 478
4 Tip Jar by Oreo - 476
5 Tip jar by Allenfire - 396
6 Mucho Mojo Por Favor? by BoBo2020 - 349
7 the Clinton brand by kid oakland - 337
8 Thank you, Mr. Chandler by billysumday - 333
9 tips please - and recs by jakester - 294
10 tip by GregMitch - 266
11 congressman from Kentucky by Ajax the Greater - 248
12 Will Clinton reject and denounce Limbaugh? by poblano - 220
13 thank you! by Matt Stoller - 220
14 We need to grasp what's really being discussed by Troutfishing - 205
15 I've had it with those by gchaucer2 - 184
16 it's easy by blueness - 161
17 Even elitists need food... by highacidity - 155
18 The first diary pisses me off by dedmonds - 148
19 Even for them, she is in a class of her own n/t by bwintx - 144
20 Tips jar by TheOpinionGuy - 136
21 Recommendations welcome! by Steven R - 121
22 Thank you, Mr. Chandler by sistermoon - 114
23 Tips? by BillyZoom - 97
24 heh n/t by zeke7237 - 95
25 Hey, Ben -- hang around a bit tonight by Seneca Doane - 92
26 Tip Jar - 5 May by Jerome a Paris - 92
27 sadly, we have already by clammyc - 91
28 Yeah!  Everybody Sucks! by MLDB - 90
29 Thanks, Rep. Chandler! by itskevin - 88
30 Thank You by BlackBox - 85

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That's all I got, folks! Stick around, tell us what's going on in your life tonight. Primary-talk isn't strictly forbidden - yeah, like I could get away with that - but I think we need some relief. Am I alone?

Always the mountains,
va dare