How can anyone here not understand that the President of the United States, who is for the first time EVER, a black man, might possibly weigh in on this issue? Did anyone here really expect that race wasn't going to at least be mentioned during this man's administration? What do you think the whole "birth certificate" debate is about? Thinly veiled bigotry from the lunatic fringe. They don't care about the facts (that there is a valid birth certificate with now-President Obama's full given name on it in the STATE of Hawaii), and their arguments are categorically insane. The dirty little fact that neither liberals nor conservatives seem to want to face is that the knee-jerk assumption of a still-too-large segment of the white population towards black men doing ANYTHING (driving, walking, talking, wearing a suit, being a CEO, trying to get into one's house after a long trip abroad) is that they're criminals about to do harm to good, God-fearing white folks, who after all, according to Pat Buchanan, built this country....using slave and immigrant labor. And all anyone wants to talk about is whether the president went too far in addressing the issue (albeit in qualified terms). Wrong question. Better question: if Dr. Gates was white, would Obama even feel the need to comment? Would the question even have come up and would the issue even reach the ears of the President of the United States? We all know the answer to that one, don't we?

Now, let's get back to health care, shall we?

Of course, in typically incoherent fashion, Sarah Palin is going to campaign for people who believe "the right things". Let's see. As near as I can tell, that would be the kind of bad government isolationism and xenophobia the GOP has become infamous for. Oh, and let's not leave out the religiosity and smirking hypocrisy either. Closeted sanctimonious bigots and homophobes unite! Here is your champion. Unfortunately we're going to have to shut her down, because she represents an increasingly irrelevant, but unusually vocal segment of the population. The whack job constituency that gets riled up enough to actually take to violence. This is that ultra far right wing that is willing to spill blood for their "cause", and she is just the kind of person who will kick that tinderbox until it ignites somewhere. We saw it in the campaign. Makes you wonder if that whole "preventive detention" argument has some weight after all. Sarah Palin could spawn a whole new generation of domestic terrorists. This is actually worse than if she were to run for president. She needs to be watched closely going forward. She'll make a complete fool of herself on the stump, but she'll also sow the seeds that could get someone killed at some point. This chick is crazy, but she's also dangerous.

Two of soon-to-be former Gov. Sarah Palin's comments stick out to me. One being that she can be "more effective outside government", and two that she did this after a lot of "prayer". My thought is that she would clearly have been a disaster had she advanced to VPOTUS. To imagine how she would be "more effective" outside government is difficult at best. Given her ties to extremist groups like the AIP and the Christian Right agenda, which continues (thankfully!) to fall into disfavor every time another "family values" Republican is caught "blowing off steam", about all her effectiveness amounts to is another voice in a locked room full of cranks. The GOP brand is becoming further marginalized with her resignation. I'm just not feeling any sense that we'll see her again on the political stage even though I'm certain we've not seen the last of her. She is clearly many things, but lacking ambition isn't one of them. As for her "prayerful" decision to quit as Governor of AK, one would have to assume she has a soul to conceive of her praying to anything higher than her ambition. But let's look at a larger theme here. The theocracy in Iran is having some glaring structural problems as we've seen, and the theocratic argument in this country is losing credibility faster and faster as its standard bearers throw in the towel. The point being that this is all to the good that she's leaving the stage now. Leaving aside her incoherence, the GOP had a powerful presence arguing for its cause, however insane and impractical. Now she's left, and one less insane, incoherent, and impractical voice in our collective ear is a good thing.

In a way, this is actually a welcome sight, and I don't think enough has been said about these "family values" conservatives being the worst sort of hypocrites when it comes to what I've called "thou shalt not" morality. I find comfort in the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes who said, "those who worry about their souls being damned probably have souls that aren't worth a damn."

So now comes Mark Sanford, strung out on truth serum and feeling the need to cleanse himself. With Norm Coleman conceding (finally!) and the latest Sarah Palin flak (can't say which one, there have been so many), there's barely anything recognizable of the GOP remaining. So forget all the talk here and elsewhere about how they can "rejuvenate" themselves. Who cares? Let them twist in the wind and pay hell in installments. This is the price for the deal they made with the Christian Right. The debate needs to move on going forward to why it's a bad idea to legislate morality, and how a preoccupation with who's sleeping with who is a bad thing for good government. Note to the "Right": your fevered fantasies of a theocratic state didn't take. GET OVER IT! Or don't, and become even more irrelevant.

Man, that was a leap!

I'm not sure what to say. Except maybe this to Mr. Limbaugh:

It's taken you a long time to go crazy. Now you've finally arrived. Welcome.