DrSteveB has a Demographic Tuesdays diary up on the RecList, How Old Are You? (Demographic Tuesdays Returns). I love all of his demographic diaries because they're tools with which I can clarify and add substance to the total experience of Daily Kos.

Sometimes age matters. In the tangible physical world of face to face encounters, the aspect of age usually plays out its role organically. If you see a hot, sexy female and you know she's under 18 your brain responds differently, even if it takes a few seconds. If you hear a sexy voice and turn around to a pot-bellied hairball with a beer can in a paper bag and flies circling his head your brain adjusts immediately.

But what about online? When does age matter for you?  

I don't care who you vote for, but you should know why. I just watched the Wisconsin Governor Doyle endorse Obama on Hardball yet when asked what Obama's accomplishments are he stuttered and fell short surprised as if the question wasn't fair. He answered with O's ethics legislation and community org. & said that his kids and wife are for Obama and well he finally decided to join up...

Democratic Party leaders know the substance of the junior Senator and they will, as we all do, enthusiastically welcome all of the new Democrats Obama has personally inspired into the party, and all of the new contributers. Obama is a man of great potential. A few years ago I sat at a Christmas dinner table in the Hamptons with a few men who Obama reported to on one of his first post college jobs. One noted that Barack Obama  may run for the presidency and the other, my best friend, spit his expensive red wine across the table into my face. I have a hard time forgetting the discussion that night...Obama had no fans yet but he was a beginner then and like his opponent he has grown over the years.

For those of you who have rejected the heavy-weight worldly Senator Clinton, you should know her accomplishments at least as much as those of us who have rejected Obama. I want to detail just one.

My first and probably only rant...

Congressmen Henry Waxman and Tom Davis, get the fuck out of Roger Clemens face!

You guys can take your House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on steroids in Baseball and shove it up every stinking ass in Congress. You guys say it's illegal to use steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs in Baseball? Well, then, call the fucking cops! Arrest the owners and trainers. But Congressional hearings? Please. Give us all a fucking break!

Thanks to a TalkLeft commenter, Robin Morgan on Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton:

Me? I support Hillary Rodham because she’s the best qualified of all candidates running in both parties. I support her because she’s refreshingly thoughtful, and I’m bloodied from eight years of a jolly "uniter" with ejaculatory politics. I needn’t agree with her on every point. I agree with the 97 percent of her positions that are identical with Obama’s—and the few where hers are both more practical and to the left of his (like health care). I support her because she’s already smashed the first-lady stereotype and made history as a fine senator, because I believe she will continue to make history not only as the first U.S. woman president, but as a great U.S. president.

Making such an important decision as a presidential vote, for me, must be done above and beyond the bullshit, the emotions, the attempts to manipulate, and the roller-coaster of primaries and campaigning.

As analyst, I'm a prosaic KISS'er (keep it simple, stupid) so I used the most basic analytical tool - a decision matrix. Entering the data from which I ranked the candidates required reading each web site - I think every page! - and listening to the key speeches. It was work to complete but not too many hours. Also, since the matrix was first created, I have been able to add or change as new information surfaced.

Basically, I will outline my process but I'm very interested in hearing how YOU made YOUR decision. Some people make gut decisions. I do too, but only preliminarily.  For important decisions, with consequences for people lives and livelihoods, I build some manner of a substantial case on paper before committing to a decision.

Some people delay decisions collecting more and more data. I set a goal to decide by the New Year. I didn't want to decide while the campaigns were deeply in the trench warfare primaries.

But you might have a better/easier/more fun method...Let's hear about it.

All kinds of good people in different camps here seem to be getting overwhelmed with the primaries. The process is, for lack of an available alternative, productive.

Presidents are continuously engaging with earnest adversaries trying to cripple their efforts with black and secret arts of gossip, innuendo, slander, leaks, and subterfuge. How will they operate when under attack? Can they lead without a script? Can then really keep focus? Can they simply survive the schedule? And will they enjoy it, thrive in the midst of daily Katrinas, suicide bombings in front of every step in the ME, the wish to accomplish more, the limitations of perceived power, and a loud, relentless loyal opposition?

Leaders have different kinds of teams, hopefully comprised of variety and diversity: people with whom they both agree and disagree, like-minded and not, both fluid members and lifetime ones, and context driven people, those consulted on limited subjects.

A team should cover for the candidates strengths and weaknesses - supplement the weaknesses and challenge the strengths. Team members also provide threads into spheres the candidate doesn't usually inhabit - they're extensions of alliances so critical to functioning with agility and speed. Some members are paid and some not, some just on call, so to speak.

The Candidates have assembled inner teams, political teams, and foreign affairs teams. Who are the people on these teams and what do they tell us of the candidates? Here I focus on foreign affairs.

I'm hoping for clues in the discussion about omissions, additions, and elaborations. Researching each one is too much work for anybody so together let's look at these folks and note what can we learn. And if there are inner team observation, let's have them.

On today's NYT front page article called As 9/11 Draws Near, a Debate Rises: How Much Tribute Is Enough?:

Few Americans give much thought anymore on Dec. 7 that Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941 (the date to live in infamy). Similar subdued attention is paid to other scarring tragedies: the Kennedy assassination (Nov. 22, 1963), Kent State (May 4, 1970), the Oklahoma City bombing (April 19, 1995).

I didn't know that! "Few Americans give much thought anymore" to Pearl Harbor? I must spend too much time on Daily Kos.

Former Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia (wiki bio) doesn't think the Democratic candidates are "serious". He's got concerns and he's ruminating as to what he can do to fix things up. He thinks the current primary process is broken and forces the candidates to swing to the fringes instead of core functions of fiscal responsibility and national security.  

...(he) said Friday he is frustrated with the direction of the presidential race and acknowledged talking with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and others about an independent challenge to the major parties.

He's says he's not interested in starting his own campaign, but if he ran he'd only be interested in the "top job".

I found a SiCKO slam from a "complimentary alternative medicine" advocate who fears a "statist health care delivery." He's a right winger but indy kind of RW guy with appeal to some progressives, and since my best friend, a progressive alternative medical expert, referred him, I thought his concerns deserved a closer, somewhat technical look.

Peter Barry Chowka (bio, web) is a writer and advocate of alternative medicine, and cancer therapies. He's on a mission to convince Americans that national health insurance (NHI) is "Medicine At Gunpoint - The Sicko Crowd's Deadly Rx For America" and begins with this ironic, Reaganesque warning:

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent...The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
 -Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis...dissenting opinion in Olmstead v. U.S...1927

So here's a closer look at a less common opposition to NHI - medical quality and privacy concerns.

From Salon's War Room

This is, we kid you not, a bit of the banter that preceded the very first audience question after President Bush finished his speech at a townhall in Cleveland on Tuesday, according to CQ Transcripts Wire:

BUSH: Main guy, first question, sure. OK.

QUESTION: Well, this may seem like it was rigged, Mr. President...

BUSH: OK. There have been a few rigged questions in my day.

(LAUGHTER)

I'm not telling you which way they were rigged, though.

(LAUGHTER)