The non-story about Michelle Obama, the University of Chicago Hospitals, and the accusations of shunning poor patients are a non-story; I have commented locally, and each of us should do what we can to answer the story.
Context: The emwergency room is a bad place to get normal medical treatment for a non-emergency medical condition. The doctors won't see you until more critical cases have ben taken care of -- which on a bad night can be through the next morning. They don't have access to your records, and they do little to form records of their own. It also stresses facilities the hospital provides for emergencies.
Many poor persons, OTOH, have no doctor. They go to the emergency room when they ned a doctor, whether they have an emergency condition or no. (They often, also, ignorer conditions which the insured would have treated until those conditions turn into emergencies.
The UofC response after the jump.

A friend had letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune published here.
He contrasted the media apotlight on John Edward's -- former senator and former presidential candidate -- past adutery with their ignoring the past adultery  of John McCain -- present senator and present presidential candidate.
That's a LTE that I wish I had written. But I hadn't the imagination to do so.
It followed several rules that we should all follow. I'll list them after the jump.

The Washington Post's Gene Pool reports a new McCain campaign attempt to fill the blogs with positive comments about their candidate.
Apparently, they're offering gifts to anyone who posts one of their pre-written praises. Gene Weingarten suggests original praise, but not something the campaign would like, as a response. I have a better idea.
Why don't we get together a group of us to agree to log on to the McCain website, get their top suggested praise, and each post it on one centrally-agreed upon blog.
The repeated copies of precisely the same message would demonstrate what their tactic is, and we could each claim the gift their using to pay for the ploy.
Anything that costs them money is to the good, especially if they will have to return all those donations from fake "bundlers."

There have been some postings recently by people who want the job of teh advertising director for the Obama campaign. For those of us who are looking for things rather than what the campaign should do, I would suggest LTEs.
I've a bunch of subjects that need to be mentioned after the jump.
OTOH, the best letters to the editor come in immediate response to a news story.

Negatives on McCain, in particular, should come from us and not from Obama.
And no one point is going to make any perceptible difference in McCain's perception. We need to continue to drip, drip, drip the facts into LTE columns. (And media blogs) Remmeber that LTEs, even if not printed, are often read by the reporter and/or editor immediately concerned with the story to which it is a response.

It's becoming clearer and clearer that we need more stimulus.
I'm suggesting a three-part plan.

1. Suspend Social-Security withholding for the rest of the year. If that's too much, suspend some fraction of it. Instead of sending people checks some time in the future, at great expense, let them get more in their next paycheck.

2. Continue unemployment insurance to everyone now getting it until the emergency is over. Nobody goes off unemployment insurance payments unless

2a) they die, or
2b) they get a job, or
2c) the unemployment rate falls under 4%.

3. Federal support for state infra-structure repairs. States are facing a cash crisis; this will result in delays in such things as bridge repairs just when we need the jobs. Let the feds fund some significant share of it -- 50%?

USA Yesterday, okay, yesterday's edition of USA Today, reported that Stevens's indictment "damages his party's chances of reacpturing the Senate." (The print edition I saw -- the electronic editions seem to have undergone frequent rewrites.)
I don't think the likelihood of the Republicans' recapturing the Senate is any lower today than it was a week ago. I don't think it could go lower than it was a week ago. The last Senate seats likely to change parties in WaPo political horse-race column The Fix listed one Democratic seat, Louisiana, among the ten most likely to switch parties. And the prose on half the Republican ones made change the way to bet.
(The question raised over Warner was not whether he would win Virginia, but whether he would garner more than 60% of the vote. The fiew reader comments didn't include any from people who thought he wouldn't do better than that.)

Are you putting enough hamburger into your freezer to eat during your retirement?
Senator John Mcxcain claimed to have been offended that the retirement of one generation is paid for by the preceding generation.
What McCain's low level of economic understanding conceals from him is that this is inevitable. It can be disguised through money and interest, but money only stands for things and services.

And the things consumed by retirees are made by current workers; the services consumed by retirees are performed by current workers.

This should be obvious to anybody. That you aren't making things or performing services is the definition of "retiree."
But, since it's not obvious enough, I'll flesh out the consequences after the jumop.

I had a letter to the editor published in the Chicago Sun Times last week. (I had checked once, didn't find it, and didn't keep checking. A friend told me that he had seen it, so I checked again.)
The URL is here, but I have printed the entire letter as published after the jump.
Rezko is a guy who was quite rich at one point, apparently honestly. At that point, he contribute to a lot of political campaigns. These included all the  campaigns of Barack Obama and the gubenatorial campaign of Rod Blagojevich. Rezko's fortune, which was based on risky real-estate deals, went south. He responded by selling his influence in the Blagojevich administration. the Republicans have tried to push this onto Obama as guilt by association.
The Sun Times published an article recalling that McCain had connections of his own, notably his starring role in "The Keating Five." My letter pointed out the differences. Obama had contributions from somebody who sold his influence with another politician. McCaion did favors for a contributor who ended up in a showy trial; he continued to do favors for other contributors.

The Washington Post has a new story up about the Republican candidate for senator from Virgina. It doesn't look good for what was already a long-shot. (Both candidates are past Governeors; Warner, the Democrat, is intensely popular; Gilmore, the Republican, is not.)
Apparently, Gilmore was on the board of a Virginia company which was being investigated by the Pentagon for fraud. (And what it takes for a politically-connected firm to be investigated for fraud by this administration beggars the imagination.) Gilmore filed campaign-disclosure statements listing him as on the board of a different corporation with the same name inco0rporated in a differnet state. Now, mistakenly saying your firm is incorporated in your state is a plausible blunder; saying that the company on whose board you serve is incorporated inan entirely different state stretches the suspension of disbelief.

The Obama campaign isn't worrying about Illinois. You only think Obama is popular in your state; he's really popular in IL.
They're sending people from different congressional districts to different states. The 9th CD, on the eastern edge of IL, is assigned to Iowa, over the western edge. On Saturday, Northside DFA drove from Chicago to Dubuque to canvass.
As of Friday morning, we expected three canvassers and no cars. In the event we had six canvassers and a potential of three cars. We left one of the cars in Chicago and drove off a little after 7:00 a.m. We expected to arrive before 11:00, but one car headed wrong and the other got a flat tire. We didn't head out of the Dubuque Obama office until after noon. My experience after the jump.

The Nation had an excellent article on the media adoration for McCain on July 7. The URL is Loving McCain.
In the midst of it, Eric Alterman and Geeorge Zornick list a huge -- although incomplete -- number of McCain flip-flops.
The picture I get is that they have decided that:

1. McCain doesn't mean it whaen he says all those conservative things. It's just what he needs to say to get nominated. A McCain administration would really be moderate-to-liberal.

2. McCain is a real straight-shooter, who never tacks his positions to fit the political winds.

(Neither seems to explain that McCain's law forbidding politicians from riding corporate jets on the cheap had a loophole that conveneiently covers John McCain.)

There keep being diaries saying that one or another of Obama's articulationg of more centrist positions means that the diarist won't support him in the general.
That's cuting off your nose to spite your face.
Look at McCain. Admittedly, we don't know where he stands on most issues, since he's been on both sides of them. His record on the Iraq occupation has been consistent, though. He won't decrease our presence significantly until the US wins the civil war between Arab Shias and Arab Sunnis. (What he'd do about th4 Kurds, nobody knows. They've been sensibly avoiding the war between their enemies.)
Some other clear issues after the jump.

When Bush's tax cuts went through, McCain rightly voted against them 'cause they were mostly a give-away to the rich. Now, McCain wants to make those cuts permanent 'cause letting them expire  would be a tax increase; he's adamanantly against any tax increase.
Well, almost any tax increase.
His health plan involves newly taxing employer-paid health insurance. He would compensate with a small deduction for health insurance you paid for yourself. I dealt with that in a post on the Washington Post blog. It was in response to a quote from McCain on Social Security and can be read after the jump.

There was a story in the New Yorker for June 30 which includes the money quote from Obama's speech against involvement in Iraq. I've selected one sentence for my sig, but the whole thing is worth reading.
The story is here, and is not especially about the quotation.

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U. S. occupartion of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear ratiohnale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst -- rather than the best -- impulses of the Arab world, and strngthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to stupid wars.

This is the guy who needs more experince in foreign affairs?

Impossibility comes in (at least) four brands. There are:

1. The logically or mathematically impossible. It can't be.

2. The scientifically imposible. It doesn't happen.

3. The technologically impossible. We can't do it.

4. The economically impossible. We can't afford to do it.

Much technological progress results in moving things from the economically or technologically impossibe to the possible.

The most important scientific developments reveal that things which once appeared scientifically possible are really scientifically impossible. Almost never does scientific progress lead in the other direction.

Those ignorant of science often confuse (2) with (3). That can lead us to anything from simple silliness to policy blunders. Concretions after the jump.

Northside (Chicago) DFA sent three of us up into the northern suburbs to canvass for Dan Seals, who came close to beating Mark Kirk in '06. He's running again, starting with the people he recruited and teh lessons he learned last time.
Turns out that the campaign was holding a "United for Change" event before we went out. I'll talk more about that after the jump.
the campaign provided us with a list of supposedly swing voters. (In Illinois, where you don't register by party, this consists of people who don't vote in primaries or vote in different primaries different years.) So, in a couple of hours, two of us nearly covered the limited list of names we'd received from a precinct. The driver was in a different precinct with a walk sheet covering only half the precinct. My experience after the jump.

I've just been reading Crashing the Gates. (Yeah, I know Palmer is behind the curve.) Kos and his coauthor go into great detail criticizing teh single-issue mindset.
You know what current activity reminds me of that criticism? All this bitching about FISA.
Yeah, I hope the filibuster works.
Yeah, I don't like the idea that my phone calls -- few and unimportant -- and my e-mail -- more important and more political -- are being tapped.
Still and all, the House has made great strides forward. They passed several necessary bills and are beginning to hold hearings on some of the abuses of this administration.
Is Pelosi perfect? No.
Does she shine in comparison to Hastert and De Lay?
Hell yes!

It never rains but it pours. I had a letter to the editor published in the weekly "alternative" paper, the Chicago Reader. The LTE may be found here. This letter was written after the one mentioned yesterday, but published earlier.
Now, probably this is the least important paper in the country for a LTE on the '08 presidential race. IL's last vote for a Republican candidate went to Ronald Reagan; Obama is even more popular in IL than he is in the reast of the country; Chicago is where the Democrats are in IL; the Reader's target audience is much more liberal than Chicago as a whole.
Still, we need to promote our memes whenever and whereever we can.
How many LTEs have you written this week?