So if you were writing about a program that tried to steer non-emergency cases away from overcrowded Emergency Wards and towards Community Health Centers, would you start your story this way?

U. of C. Shunning Poor Patients?

Wow, everyone's having fun with this. This is what greeted me when I accessed my Yahoo Account. The AP is calling it 'McCain's Housing Crisis'.

SJ-R on the opportunities following the election of a new President to the Illinois State Senate:

Dem Day itself traditionally begins with the County Chair Breakfast. Turn-out this year was extraordinary. Tables were squeezed into the hall and it was standing room only near the back.

All the statewide Democratic officials spoke. A lot of it was focused on the national election and the need to travel to battleground states. Senator Durbin, here speaking, reminisced about an early discussion he had had with Obama encouraging him to run: "Some times you pick the moment and sometimes the moment picks you," he recalled telling Obama.

Just got a couple of shots from the evening preceding Dem Day at the State Fair.

This is traditionally a day of "low-ticket" fundraisers with beer flowing and great opportunities to meet fellow Dems from across the state.

The first picture is of Leo with Senator Dick Durbin at the Sangamon County Dem Fund-raiser at Boone's Uptown Grill.

You know you're deep in Republican territory when the talk turns to how overtaxed corporations are. Of all the problems in this country, you really wonder what kind of a value system would make this a priority.

Anyway. The current version goes something like this (courtesy of John McCain):

The Chicago Tribune is channeling the Weekly Standard:

Having made hay of Barack Obama's relative youth and his foreign-sounding name, his opponents are now homing in on his neighborhood.

I never got this 'Fascism' thing among the rightwingers -- unless they conceive of it as some kind of dance step or fashion accessory.

The appeal to authority and misuse of national and religious symbols are so much part of their operating procedure that there's nothing much left to accuse us poor liberals of. [h/t Rick Perlstein]

Message to the scoundrels running the McCain Campaign:

It's something called 'leadership' plus something called 'hope' that got those 200,000 Germans packed into that Rally for Obama in Berlin.