As I sit here preparing to launch into yet another diary/diatribe about my day and my thoughts on it, I'd like to take a moment and heartily endorse Firefox 3.0. It's easy the best web browser I've ever used, and a definite step up in terms of stability from Firefox 2.0. Big thumbs up.

And with that shameless plug out of the way, I can commence to explaining to you the pleasures of phone banking. I'm sure I've touched on the topic before, but I'd like to go a little bit more in depth. Phone banking, for those of you who may be unaware, consists of making phone calls to various cities across the country to gather information about voters. Every intern is required to do two hours of phone banking a week - think of it as the equivalent of community service as mandated by a capricious judge. It is not fun by any means, but it's a necessity, and being that we're on the lowest rung of the Committee ladder, we have to do it. The stories you hear when making these calls range from amusing to irritating to heartbreaking (one sickly old woman told me she couldn't answer questions because she had just gotten home from the hospital, and then urged me to keep working hard for John McCain). Today I was assigned to make calls to Pennsylvania, and when I was finished, I thought I had earned the pint of Sierra Nevada I had with dinner.

Most of the day consisted of standard blog work, but at a much faster pace than usual. No huge news broke today, but there were some things that generated a bit of blog traffic. Continuing some of what I wrote about yesterday, John McCain (probably not in fact driven by my words, sadly) called for the building of forty-five new nuclear reactors as a means of taking the next step in U.S. energy production. There will be, of course, the usual arguments against the proposal, but I think that given our current energy situation the country is ready to give nuclear another look.

MoveOn.org (who I refuse to link to from this site - if you're so curious, Google it) launched a new ad attacking John McCain today, featuring a young mother clinging to her infant son and telling Senator McCain that "You can't have him!" Her point is that she doesn't want her son fighting in overseas wars, but A) by the time her son is old enough to fight, John McCain will be long out of office (if he even gets in - is this a crack in the Left's confidence?), B) by that point, it will be the child's choice, not the mothers, and C) I don't think McCain has made it a point to seize children yet. Perhaps I didn't read his platform close enough, but I don't remember seeing that bit.

Over notable bits of news:

-Obama's bounce may not be so sturdy in at least one state.

-Even some on the Left are coming around to the idea that Bush told the truth about Iraq.

-For all their fundraising ability, apparently Democrats can't spend money well enough to afford their National Convention.

-With a possible investigation looming in his future over receiving preferential treatment from mortgage lenders, shouldn't Senator Chris Dodd, Chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, know something about mortgage rates? (By the way, this man wanted to President.)

-Barack Obama can't seem to get his story straight on Israel or Iraq (but don't tell anybody).

Food, drink, sleep. That's the plan for now. As Obama's National Security team might say, T.T.F.N.