You write well. You should have a blog.

On the other hand, Republicans will paint Obama as this “mystery” candidate about whom no one really knows anything and that beneath the layers, he is simply a left wing elitist liberal who will raise taxes, expand government, run up deficits further and facilitate the far-left policies of Pelosi, Kennedy, Kerry, Reid, talk to Ahmed-in-his Jammies, etc.

I personally do not agree with a multitude of Obama’s policies (the ones he has grudgingly talked about). However, his undoing in the fall might be simply that Americans will not elect a black liberal for President. His vote bank has been youth, far left liberals and blacks, from state to state to state. He did successfully get them to vote. However he has failed to win over the rural voters and blue collar voters in the Democratic ranks. In the general election, rural voters (Dems and Republicans) will go fot McCain across the board. The blue collar Reagan Democrats could go McCain’s way, especially in Ohio, PA, Missouri, Indiana, etc. And there are a few states that Obama cannot win (my prediction); Virginia, NC, SC, Georgia, Alabama, MS, Texas, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, TN, KY, OK. Even Florida is unclear as Jews seem to favor McCain (Obama has said pro Palestinian things); NW Florida is Republican. So, from an electoral college map perspective, it is an uphill battle, especially if many Hillary supporters cross over and vote for McCain. Obama cannot rely on just the liberals in east coast and west coast to win. Also, the black vote (>90% everywhere) helped him in the primaries. But in general, black vote does not count for that much, especially in the South.

For Obama to win, he has to show that he can go beyond his base of blacks, liberals and youth and he has to show that he can win in non-urban areas.

In my post and previous comment, I had described why I think the gmail account creation procedure is flawed and how it can be fixed. While my suggestion, if implemented, is an improvement over the current mechanism, there is still the problem where google sends email to whatever address is specified in the account creation form — causing spam if the address is deliberately or accidentally misspelled.

I have a simple idea to avoid this spam.
If the user provides a secondary email address along with other information required for account creation, and if the login name is available, the form displays a verification code. The user can activate the gmail account by sending an email from the secondary email address — proving ownership of the address — with the verification code. If the 2 email addresses don’t match, account is not created. Note that though it is easy to spoof the “From” address, the spoofster — I made up the word just now! — won’t know the secondary email address nor the verification code. Ofcourse, Google will get lot of spam activation emails but it should be able to filter them out.

This obviously applies not just to gmail accounts but any other account.

Comments?