I'll be the judge:

John McLaughlin, host of a usually great PBS political talk show, calls Obama an Oreo — black on the outside, white on the inside.

While I don't personally believe McLaughlin is a racist, he may just be an idiot. Comparing blacl people to inanimate objects, no matter what the point, is generally the wrong thing to do.

The New Yorker publishes a magazine cover featuring Obama dressed as Osama — as if we need any more confusion on this front — and makes Michelle Obama out to be a revolutionary, complete with an AK47 and gun belts.

While it's easy to say the cover of the magazine is inappropriate, it's clearly satire. It rattled some cages, and it pissed some people off. That's just successful political commentary. The cover was meant to be a reflection of the misinformation and rumors being spread about the Obamas, and it was exactly that. If some readers can't tell the difference between this ironic potrayal and the reality of the Democratic nominee, then the New Yorker's point is well taken.

Some people are so taken with Obama, and his candidacy, that they feel mockery should be off limits. My feeling? Screw them if they can't take a joke. It will only be a matter of time before McCain is spoofed for some aspect of his candidacy, and I wonder if the legions of Obamaphiles will cry foul then? Not likely.

Incidentally, as the link above will point out, the Niña replica ship will soon be visiting Humboldt County. It occurs to me with this ship's arrival, its crew members will see a relatively well-settled town in Northern California. But if these ships were preceded by the small pox virus and 95 percent of our population had died off prior to its arrival, they'd see a loose gathering of hunter-gatherer societies who they could feel comfortable calling savages.

History repeating itself?

This raises so many questions ... and most of them end with a punch line. For starters, is this for real? All we can do is hope.

I have seen religious tracts, such as from Chick Publications, that often times feature other religious groups and Satan as comic caricatures. But this one goes beyond any I've seen before. It's the only one I could find that makes Jesus out to be so ... well ... bad ass.

As for the recommended colors, what exact hue is "Flesh of Christ?"

On a personal note, Somerville took the initiative when arriving at the Times-Standard to create the position of Web editor, so that the online content objectives of this newspaper would not get lost in the shuffle and hubbub of other priorities. Because of this move, and the attention Somerville paid to online endeavors, our Web site has grown exponentially in terms of content over the past two years.

He was billed as a forward-thinker, and in this regard he truly lived up to that label. I thank Rich for the opportunity.

As the search begins for a new managing editor, I and others here at the Times-Standard know that until then we will be ably led by City Editor/Interim Managing Editor Kimberly Wear, who to my mind is one of the finest journalists on the North Coast. The future of The Times-Standard remains bright.

Russert's style was to make the guests face up to their past statements and expose inconsistencies. He never played favorites, and he never played soft. He was bold in his search for the truth and unflappable when meeting resistance. He was the reason I first wanted to become a journalist. Such a loss will be sorely felt at NBC, and in the rest of world of journalism.

I used to agree. As a reporter, obviously I grew sick of savage bastards calling my mother a whore and other things when I wrote a story about some meth head getting arrested. Now I welcome it.

Just kidding. But seriously, a newspaper Web site can drive itself nuts policing all the comments that come in, or they can clamp down entirely and ruin what has become one of the most prolific forums for free speech in the modern age. But there is a third path: I prefer the Topix system, predictably, in that it allows the commenters to police themselves. If someone posts something offensive, and three people report it as such, we take it down. If a particular forum gets so out of hand that it can't be so easily controlled, then we shut down that particular forum.

But anonymity, while painful at times, allows a level of honesty that isn't available otherwise. Therefore, we'll be keeping our comment system as is. Comment away, but know that if you piss of too many of your peers, you're likely to be taken down.

So a woman develops the backless bra, and everyone is ga-ga over the innovation. Seriously folks, in an age when scientists are growing organs in petri dishes, and when surgery can make Dolly Parton forever firm, why has it taken so long for someone to patent this no-brainer?

Nevertheless, I can't help the rush I get when an earthquake strikes, and the little voice in the back of my head that screams for more.

Every time an earthquake kicks off, there's that initial moment of surprise, and then the anxious expectation — is this THE BIG ONE? The megathrust? Are we all going to be shaken off the planet like so many fleas off a pissed off dog? When, as has happened so far in my life, it never is the big one, I can't help but feeling a little disappointed.

Apparently, there's a show on cable that pits the two former child stars together in a reality show where they struggle to capture again the fame that dominated their youth.

Feldman looks good, Haim looks like a tweaker. Here's a clip:

But I put up with my share, too, and that is the nature of a marriage. But how could any person, male or female, want more than one spouse? As if the one isn't enough to keep you on your toes.

But I have to say that if it were up to me, I don't know that there would be laws written to outlaw such a practice. As long as the decision to enter into a marriage was made by consenting adults, and not by parents seeking to offload noisy teenagers, why should the state intervene?

We hope it won't turn into a full-on cage match showdown between us and the Reporter staff with the governor playing referee. I'm sure it won't ... I think.

I'll write an update on what happened when I get back, sometime around 1 p.m. Unfortunately, the best question has already been asked. When the governor came up to kick off his re-election campaign at the Samoa Cookhouse, Andrea Arnot piped up with a humdinger: Will there be a Terminator 4?

It gave all the journalists on the North Coast a reason to be proud.

***** UPDATE ******

The ER and TS managed to avoid any scraps this time around, even exchanging a handshake and pleasantry or two. Both sides were obviously thrilled to have the big-wig in town, although in journalism it's totally not cool to show that you're impressed.

In the who-had-the-best-questions competition, as always I thought our staff walked away the easy victor. And online, the T-S creamed the competition: a video, a multimedia slideshow and a Web update up as of 4 p.m.

I love competition.

As for Schwarzzy, it's easy to see why he was elected. He has the charisma of a movie star, and he's not afraid to use it for his political advantage. At times today, when a tough question was asked, he evade the issue and try to charm his way out of it.

Case in point. He was asked about the skyrocketing cost of higher education, and he said he has worked to minimize the rate of increase but that in the end students just need to get a job and pay their own way through school. That's what I did, he said.

Let's analyze this: if UC Davis has a tuition of more than $20,000 a year, and a student works as a dishwasher or fry cook to raise the money, then he or she might just make enough working full-time to pay that tuition.

But living expenses — rent, food, gas, bus pass — you can forget about. And books? That's absolutely out of the question. This answer pointed out that on some things, this governor seems absolutely out of touch.

He mentioned that his daughter was in the midst of applying for various colleges, and was lucky enough to get accepted. Hmmm. Will she be paying her own way through college, Mr. Schwarzenegger, by working an hourly job? Somehow I doubt it.

Cell phones have come to Cuba.

Members of the Buena Vista Social Club can now — in the middle of their basement set, dodging the single communist light bulb that sways back and forth on its moth-eaten cord — call their American cousins and say, "Wish you were here."

And the American cousins can say, "That music sounds great. Let me record you, release the album and make a mint off your talent while you remain conveniently stuck in Red Cuba, unable to cash in on Capitalism."

It's nice to see progress made in the struggle for human rights. Cell phones. Man, what's next? Ipods?

The pyramids have been built, as has the Great Wall. Delving further and further into space is how this generation, this new millenium, will mark itself out against the tides of humanity that came before. Look at us!! We have rockets!!

But being a normal nine-to-fiver, an out-of-shape dad no less, my opportunities for space travel are severely limited, right? Maybe not.

According to these guys, a capitalist or two is taking an interest in developing relatively low-flying space trips for tourists.

Something to hope for — when I am 60 years old, I will hawk the last of my valuables, sell my dog and buy a ticket for a space flight. There may be dangers, but alas: Is there a better way to go than trying to burst the bubble of space? Sign me up.

Some people question whether the investment of time and resources into space is worthwhile, given the huge problems we have back here on planet Earth.

My answer? No matter what the conditions here, humankind needs something to kindle the imagination, to fire the soul furnace. If we spend all our time trying to fix problems, rather than at the same time trying to put one foot out further than ever before, we atrophy. And as things work, inevitably the research into space exploration, space travel etc., will pay dividends here on the home planet.

Tang, for example. Without space travel, we never would have discovered the wonders of Tang.

All this comes up because NASA budget cuts had almost led to the winter-time shutdown of the Mars Rover missions. After all the failed space missions coming from NASA, a budget crunch almost led to the hibernation of the one better-than-expected project still in operation.

Thankfully, the public outcry was too much, and the cuts will come from somewhere else. Hey, I know. There's a war in Iraq that seems to be quite the fiscal drain ...

The war in Iraq on Monday received the dubious distinction of having killed 4,000 American soldiers.

Add to that the roughly 85,000 civilians that died, according to estimates by this Web site, and the real magnitude of this mistake becomes clear.

Any soldier dying is a tragedy, but tens of thousands of civilians who had no choice in the matter? That's beyond tragedy, beyond apology, but somehow I'm still sorry.

I wonder if our country can ever live this down.

For me, the first order of business is to check the weather ... Mostly sunny first thing in the morning, contrary to the forecast, which calls for mostly cloudy skies today leading into rain tonight. Maybe the egg hunt will be on after all.

Of course, I am firm believer (as all Humboldters must be) in getting the hunt on no matter what. As a child, I remember one particularly wet Easter when my brother and I, with some cousins, spent Easter afternoon in the dirty and oily garage, crawling around on our hands and knees, looking for eggs amongst burnt out carburetors and old weed whackers.

It was a white trash Easter, for sure. But as kids we felt we were getting something over on Mother Nature. Give us your best, Ma Earth, and we'll still find a way to conduct this silly tradition of ours.

Question of the Day: How did the story of Christ's resurrection evolve into a giant bunny hopping around the planet and giving away old boiled eggs?

The answer, of course, lays in marketing. Early Christians realized that the best way to convert the pagans was to adopt their rituals and holidays and adapt them to the Christian tradition.

"In second century Europe, the predominate spring festival was a raucous Saxon fertility celebration in honor of the Saxon Goddess Eastre (Ostara), whose sacred animal was a hare," says the article. "The colored eggs associated with the bunny are of another, even more ancient origin. The eggs associated with this and other Vernal festivals have been symbols of rebirth and fertility for so long the precise roots of the tradition are unknown, and may date to the beginning of human civilization."