The NY Times has a great article about next steps for Barack Obama as he implements a 50 state strategy for the general election and prepares for Republican attack via print publication, the airwaves, and the internet.

The article talks about the necessary expansion of Barack's staff, which may include members of the Clinton campaign, among others.

The hiring will include staff for Michelle Obama.

Bear with me:

Okay,

So I see a story today.  I see it everywhere.

It's about drugs in our water.

First, let me know if this has been diaried already.  Nothing came up in a search, so I'm diarying with good intentions.

The March 7 Hollywood Reporter carries an article entitled Disney steers clear of 'Path to 9/11'

The article reports that Disney CEO Roger Iger's big bucks pay package is being challenged by a fund manager, Tom Borelli, at Disney's annual shareholder's meeting due to Disney's shelving of the DVD version of The Path to 9/11, a 2006 miniseries.

with the economic realities of the American people.

Here's what Clinton said this morning on ABC that got me riled -

Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., this morning left open the possibility that, if elected, her government would garnish the wages of people who didn't comply with her health care plan. "We will have an enforcement mechanism, whether it's that or it's some other mechanism through the tax system or automatic enrollments," Clinton said in an appearance on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos".

Clinton went on to say, though, that such mechanisms would not include penalties. "They don't have to pay fines ... We want them to have insurance. We want it to be affordable. And what I have said is that there are a number of ways of doing that. Now, there's not just one way of getting to that."

You have a chance to make history on February 5.

You have a voice in the Democratic Primary.

Connecticut has a closed primary voting sytem,

What I got during the CNN/National Black Caucus Debate in South Carolina, is that Hillary Clinton had a really good time attacking Barack Obama.

She was really enjoying herself.

She was tough, just like she's promised us.

I'm reading a New York Times article today about the goings on up in New Hampshire and I read this about Mitt Romney -

Last week a 6.8-magnitude earthquake shook Japan.

As reported by Reuters-

It also started a fire at the seven-reactor, 8,212-megawatt Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant that burned a transformer, spilled several hundred barrels containing radioactive waste and vented some radioactive waste.

Is a little thing like that going to slow down plans in the United States to build a bunch of nuclear reactors within the next ten years?

No way!

As a fan of both Al Gore and Mother Earth, I am excited enough about the Live Earth concerts coming up tomorrow all over the world.

I got even more excited when I heard Al Gore on TV last night and I realized these concerts are not about raising money but about raising awareness and taking action.

That said, the coolest thing I've seen so far rolling out on Reuters today about the event tomorrow is this on scientists who'll be playing music on Antarctica.

I turned on the tube this morning for news and flipped onto MSNBC, where there was (shock of all shocks) Ann Coulter screaming over a phone at Joe Scarborough.

I was so appalled at Joe's justification for having the angry Coulter (when is the woman NOT angry?) spewing on his show that I wrote to him at MSNBC.

Joe basically said that it was okay to have Ann Coulter on to justify what she'd done because Bob Shrum had been hateful and Bill Maher had been hateful and that he wanted to shed the "disinfecting light of day" on all of it and provide "context" for it.

Then he broke to commercial.

So I turned off the t.v. and here's what I wrote him.  His email address, by the way, is joe@msnbc.com.

Of course he's free to have Ann on, and I'm just as free to not watch his morning or evening shows.

I think people need to choose to turn these people off their sets and stop buying their books.

Will the political left in positions of power lead the charge to investigate the possible wrongdoings of Diane Feinstein in her capacity as chairperson or ranking minority member of the Senate Subcommittee on Military Construction?

They'd better or the GOP is going to rip the Democrats to shreds with it.

And Saddam Hussein is scheduled to be executed by hanging at dawn.

I am inspired by reading about people like Nabila Nazli.

I read today in the New York Daily News that a Brooklyn mother, helped by neighbors and firefighters, saved the lives of her five children early this morning.  Nabila Nazli and her children were caught in a house fire.

Last night I was perusing the news of the day on-line (my now usual mode of reading the news) and I happened across an essay in the Mental Health and Behavior section of the New York Times on-line entitled Friends for Life: An Emerging Biology of Emotional Healing.

I am very interested in articles about healing and neuroscience these days, being a member of a cancer support group because of my husband's recent treatment for colorectal cancer.  I've found that healing involves a whole lot more than simply finding the right drugs and doctors to fix you.

All of the convergent thought I'm reading these days triggered a series of reflections in me about how much of our lives should be involved in healing these days - healing in our politics, our health, our environment, our interpersonal and international relations, and even in our inner lives.

I am married to a Jewish man, so perhaps my ears and eyes are perhaps more keenly tuned to anti-semitic slurs, however softly couched.

I am seeing an increasing number of references to the Lieberman campaign, his staff, and his supporters here and on various other progressive blogs that are making me more and more uneasy.

The category, or frame, if you will, revolves around the Lieber-ilk names.

Below the fold is my open letter to Ned Lamont's campaign.  When I heard the news today that the Lamont campaign was having Terri Schiavo's husband campaign for them, I was heartsick that we on the left are using the politics of personality and personal destruction to run a political campaign.

I have sent this letter to The Stamford Advocate, in Stamford, CT, in the hope they will run it.  In the event they won't - at least some of you out here will have seen it.

Below the break is my e-mail to Brendan Sharkey, Democratic State Representative in Connecticut, regarding the Ned Lamont campaign here in my great state.

Jurors have found Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, former Enron executives, guilty of fraud and conspiracy. Sentencing is set for the week of September 11.

Good.