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NYT: Reason to Run? Nader Argues He Has Plenty:

Mr. Nader's argument that he can draw more support from Mr. Bush than from Mr. Kerry has yet to be proved. A New York Times/CBS News poll earlier this month found that when voters were asked to choose between Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry, 46 percent chose the president and 43 percent Mr. Kerry. When Mr. Nader was added to the mix, Mr. Bush's support stayed at 46 percent, Mr. Kerry's dropped to 38 percent and Mr. Nader drew 7 percent. More than half of Nader supporters preferred Mr. Kerry in a two-way race.

"Conservatives for Nader," the comic Jon Stewart mused recently. "Not a large group. About the same size as 'Retarded Death Row Texans for Bush.' "

New York Press: 50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers (via Romenesko):

29
Strand Staffers

SLAVING AT A used bookshop may be a nobler vocation than trading pork bellies, but is it too much to ask that someone make eye contact through his or her Elvis Costello glasses? Is it unreasonable to expect the occasional acknowledgement of a customer's presence? Do new employees take classes to learn how to display utter contempt? Screw the Strand and its narrow aisles and indecipherable shelving practices and overpriced used books and staff of petulant clerks. They can ram all eight miles of books up their mopey asses. Next to them, the people at Barnes & Noble are downright motherly.

From the New York Times' recent 10 Questions For... Al Franken:

Q. 9. Why do liberals like you, Al Franken, hate America?

A. Liberals like me love America. We just love America in a different way. You love America like a 4-year-old loves his mommy. Liberals love America like grown-ups. To a 4-year-old, everything Mommy does is wonderful and anyone who criticizes Mommy is bad. Grown-up love means actually understanding what you love, taking the good with the bad and helping your loved one grow. Love takes attention and work and is the best thing in the world. That's why we liberals want America to do the right thing. We know America is the hope of the world, and we love it and want it to do well. We also want it to do good.

Franken's radio show debuts soon on Air America.

The firing of the mellifluous Edwards, my morning companion through all these years, portends bad things. The telling sign was not just that he was axed as the program's host but that no one can tell you why.

Richard Cohen: Empty Talk at NPR (washingtonpost.com).

What's David Bernstein on about? After a decent criticism of a sloppy (and ugly) anti-gay marriage piece by Maggie Gallagher, he throws out this teaser, which I can't follow:

I'll blog more about this some other time, but how come no one seems to have written about the fact that the legal accouterments of divorce--a unilateral breakup leads to alimony, equal division of assets, etc., don't seem to be at all appropriate for a typical gay male couple?

What exactly about the potential for alimony and the equal division of assets isn't appropriate for any couple who gets married? The thrust seems to be that gay men are somehow so far out of line with proper American culture that the old rules of divorce are just inapplicable to them. But I can't imagine why or how that is. And any other interpretation I can come up with makes even less sense. Hopefully he will clarify soon, but whatever it is can't be something I would agree with.

Poynter Online - "USA Today Scandal A Threat To White Privilege, Mediocrity" in which Dr. Ink asks will Jack Kelley's sins be visited upon other white journalists?