...because I knew the lunatics would come out of the woodwork. And I was not disappointed.

How do I know vaccines don't cause autism? I guess I don't, but then I also can't prove the Apollo program wasn't a hoax. I can't prove HIV wasn't invented by a CIA scientist. Or that the Pope isn't behind global warming.

Think about it for a moment. There isn't bedrock proof that vaccines don't cause health problems, but why does it have to be vaccines? Maybe cell phone towers cause autism. Or elevated C02 levels. Or the heavy metals used to manufacture the computer on your desk.

These are all possibilities. They are just as likely as vaccines to have done it -- after all, C02 levels and consumer electronics and heavy use of radio frequency channels all started around the time autism began to spike. So did the use of plastic. None of them have been disproved as causes of autism. Does that mean you are going to throw away your cell phone and your computer? If you believe autism is caused by vaccines, then you should. Because somebody said it could be true. I said it could be true.

Or you could get a brain and decide you are not going to ignore the preponderance of scientific evidence just because there is a scintilla of doubt. You can! It works! Use your cell phone! Use your computer! Wait until you have reasonable proof before you jump off that cliff!

Get a life!

This Cox firing thing is a complete red herring. The SEC is charged with reviewing securities fraud and requiring transparency in public corporations. That has very little to do with the current mess. Nobody is saying that is what happened here. In the heyday of the dot com boom and with Enron and Worldcom there were clearly cases of companies cooking the books and manipulating stock prices for their own gain.

The current crash is fueled by improper lending practices and a real estate bubble. The big banks are responsible here, as well as millions of private citizens who borrowed more than they could afford on the prayer that they could flip their houses for a profit if payments went too high. This has nothing to do with the purview of the SEC. If anyone is responsible, it would be the Treasury Department or the Federal Reserve, both of whom had the clout to step in and stop these practices early.

McCain's attack on Cox is particularly craven. If he wants to blame a big name, he should consider the Secretary of the Treasury or former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan. But no Republican has the guts to denounce the sainted Alan Greenspan.

The last thing, and I mean the very last thing, we need right now is a convenient scapegoat. This market crash has exposed several structural weaknesses in our economy, including addiction to oil and our propensity to borrow our way out of any economic pinch.

Blaming this on the SEC is like blaming global warming on Big Oil. It accomplishes nothing, and fails to address the underlying fault: America's eyes are too big for its stomach.

Too many people want to give Obama advice on how to run his campaign. This makes as much sense as yelling at the actors in a play while the play is going on.

Obama is a smart man. He'll muddle through. All this advice only puts needless pressure on the man. Yes, he looks unflappable, but deep inside I am certain all this yelling and screaming gets to him.

If you want to help Obama, argue about issues. Come up with a plan to fix the economy. Make some good points about offshore drilling, before that runaway train gets out of town. Let Obama worry about how he looks, and how angry he lets on to be.

Give Obama some light, and less heat.

Why does every expenditure of tax money have to be about New Orleans?

You think New Orleanians don't pay taxes? Tell that to my 1040. If we had $800 million, the price of the new Yankee Stadium, in improvements to the 17th street canal prior to Katrina, there wouldn't have been a Katrina.

If we got 40% of the money the feds collect on oil contracts for drilling OFF OUR OWN COAST, oil drilling that has destroyed our coastal wetlands and made massive hurricane flooding possible -- if we just had 40% of that money, we could build our own hurricane defenses, no help from you.

This morning I get up and discover that my tax money, $85 billion of it, is going to rescue a Wall Street firm. Huh. That number is disturbingly close to the amount of money Congress approved for Katrina. So how come it is dandy to pay billions and billions to make sure insurance brokers stay employed, but New Orleanians, well, to hell with 'em.

You know why our country is going down the drain? Because too many people care about their own paychecks, and not enough care about the integrity of the entire country.

Typical American: Throw away an entire American city. What the hell, everything is disposable around here. We'll just keep throwing cities away one by one until there's nothing left but the Hamptons. Then it will all be good.