Was it the young-ish guy who gave the charismatic speech a la 2004?

and Merkley and Franken and Hagan and LaRocco and Musgrove and Noriega and Lunsford and Slattery and Allen and Martin.

(Below the fold.)

Humor me for just one moment in the blitz of Housegate and Veepstakes Eve's rumor-mill.

How great would this ticket be? More than I thought when I first half-suggested it.

--if you're writing the same diary that 100 other kossacks are writing each day. That is, complaining about the state of the race.

If only they would listen to you, a Ph.D in armchair quarterbacking!

If only they did things this way instead of that.

How could a rightwing, economic moron turn gas prices into a wedge in his favor?

This post will go into why he is, and our friend over at 538 has a new article on precisely that topic.

Forget the tracking polls and the day to day minutae.

McCain's is a campaign with one real leg, and it's voters of age.  No matter what Obama does to increase youth vote, elders are statistically overrepresented among likely and actual voters, time after time. They are providing a higher element of risk to the Obama camp than they should by nature of some basic truths.

Let's talk about how to cut that down, and pull the rug out from under McCain.

Having battled obesity and apathy for nearly four decades, Henry the Tuatara is back, baby.

He's even been mentioned as a a VP contender for the Grand Olde Party's ticket.

Henry's fascinating comeback story below the fold.

Reagan made Carter into a laughingstock, and now McCain's primed to become a similar target of ridicule.

If Obama *loosens his stance on offshore drilling, it will be better than if McCain makes his only wedge issue stick and divide the vote in Florida, Michigan, Colorado and New Hampshire.

Pristine environmental preserves could be irreperably violated and those suffering most marginally helped, if at all, while the elite continues to prosper.

But then again, extract that to a general national policy and that would be what would happen everywhere with McCain.

But why should we accept stupidity on drilling from Dems?

Good God: all the hand wringing on this site.

We always knew we'd have a lot of work this election. Hard work.

If you're trying to cherry pick some piece of data telling you that voters will never ever ever vote for a Republican again and Bush has cooties you're being lazy and looking for other people to save your participatory government for you.  Which is exactly what these people who can't make up their minds yet (but will) have been doing for decades.

OK Senate candidate Andrew Rice's speech at Bergey Wind Company in Norman, OK on June 23rd was simply stunning.  

Though I've been supporting the progressive state senator for months, I'd never heard him speak about environmental issues with the kind of focus and organized thinking with which A Siegel, and to a lesser extent myself, have hammered away with here on Daily Kos.

This election is personal down to the smaller, obscure races.

This is not about revenge.

It's about getting things right.  About the cry for balance echoing throughout the universe, and the deep unease rattling in our bones.

Nevada is a true (South-)Western swing state: a mixture of hard-righties, surburban indies and liberals, legalize-my-pot and gun-loving libertarians, cohesive unions and a strongly growing latino population.

Historically, Nevada's economy is  likely to be exceptionally hard hit by downturns in the nationwide economy. By at least one measure, NV is doing worse than the US as a whole.  And how might this effect the elections in November?

Charts and more below the fold...

The global economic system is not merely at the pop of a cyclical, natural bubble caused by overconfidence and greed, but transforming.  Ambition and greed, their present form known by "Anglo disease" as named by Jerome, has become so reckless that irreperable change is being wrought in a way that did not happen in 1999, or 1987.

While many of the points are not new, most Americans--and especially the "serious" boys and girls--remain fundamentally ignorant of what's going on.  

Behind the scenes, Senator Kennedy is preparing one of the cornerstone pieces of legislation for a new political age. I will be brief.

Amidst the haste, the fighting, the devastation, the chaos, it can outright medicinal to take in and digest a simple act of beauty. However flawed and human, however compromised. Last June, Senator Max Baucus, (D-MT) often not our favorite Dem, helped the Nature Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land preserve a massive swath of western Montana!

This region holds perhaps the greatest store of ecologic riches in the Lower 48. -- Kat Imhoff, director for the Nature Conservancy in Montana

Pictures and details below the flap...

I will no longer be donating to Barack Obama for the forseeable future, though I'm one of his earliest and most vociferous, consistant supporters on Daily Kos. I'm plum broke, and I have neglected my other candidates in critical congressional races.

It's time to put my money where my mouth is. We've lifted Obama up, we need to give him a progressive majority.

Our history is not written in stone.  It is time to bring new history to Oklahoma.  Will you join me, below?

Laying all your eggs in one basket is poor planning whether the subject is finance, politics or in life in general.  The Obama campaign rejected such silliness when they released their 17 state roadmap, a list of swing states to expand the battlefield.  So why do we let the old swing state narratives from the media influence our discussion now?

Rather than take their dubious advice, I propose something very simple that we can do to reduce our risks for November below the fold...