Yes, I know you didn't say what I wrote, but then I didn't say you did. I said "the right wing" and not "tiberius."

You wrote, "Glenn started his post by ridiculing her seeing a celebrity at the same time she was elected mayor in 1996. What does that have to do with anything other than taking a cheap shot just like the liberal media does constantly."

Where's the cheap shot? Didn't she go to see Ivana Trump? You don't think this informs us about her character? I do. And, certainly, she did some "dumb things" while mayor of Wasilla, not least being her abuse of power that Glenn has cited. Now I can't speak for Glenn, naturally, but what happened in 1996 is certainly pertinent in demonstrating how this politician began her career. Were Glenn to cite all of her statements and actions from 1997 onward (as he might very well do in future and ThinkProgess has done in abbreviated form), it would necessarily comprise more than one post.

Finally, while you might not think of yourself as a media person, you really don't have to be one to take cheap shots. After all, your earlier comment about Glenn was this: that he's "a liberal media slut ... who commutes between here and Rio [and] wouldn't understand a woman from a small American town.

Assuming you're sincere, your screed merely punctuates Greenwald's argument, that "Palin's speech -- indeed, the entire GOP Convention -- was almost entirely bereft of substance and 'issues.' But it is that way by design."

And having "argued" that so-called attacks against Palin are vicious, you then write "we know that anything 'disrespectful' of the Chosen One is 'racist', 'off limits', almost blasphemous. I guess whether it's true doesn't count," you conclude "the arrogant, snotty, condescending, elitists ... cannot understand Sarah Palin. But hundreds of millions of Americans do: Sarah Palin is one of us, not one of you."

Good Lord. In one relatively short post you do the thing you decry and toss in the elitist talking point for good measure. And nowhere do you cite even a single issue.

You'll note CargoCult signs his name, Ike Solem, below his posts.

A brilliant, incisive, and witty riposte. What I particularly liked was the way you cited, in exquisite detail, her record as an elected official.

To wit:

* went from PTA to the Governor's Mansion

* bore five children and accepted a special needs child without

killing it

* has a kid going to Iraq

* Can shoot a moose and

* look hot while doing it,

* and most of all, looks natural smiling, unlike liberal females.

Good God, you're right. "Liberalism is in trouble."

It certainly seems like a zero sum game to me, with the American side as the losing one. A slew of Chinese goods and financing for, among other things, the Iraq war, has given us a mammoth debt owned by China. It's good for them that "the U.S. appetite for Chinese goods has translated into increased prosperity for hundreds of millions of Chinese," but, frankly, it's only enabled poor American leadership to continue to be just that: poor.

I agree, as Glenn puts it, that "the total inability to engage in even the most minimal self-reflection or self-criticism -- is one of the principal reasons why reforming the establishment press is virtually impossible and the creation of competing alternatives is the only real solution." My principal concern is that the same powers-that-be who work to manipulate the public via traditional media will undercut the exceptional work done by so many on the Internet. The technical means already exist and all that's needed is some soggy legislation passed by an acquiescent legislature.

So Boehner "and all of my colleagues are concerned about the lack of information and the lack of consultation that has occurred." Given Congressional rubber-stamping over FISA and Iraq war funding, to cite but two examples, what other response could guys like Boehner expect? He and his colleagues long ago ceded their power and authority to the executive branch.

Both McCain and Palin are, for all intents and purposes, functionally illiterate if, to extend the definition, words function to produce continuity of thought, logic and meaning. The gobblydegook these two routinely spout is no less than the dribblings of utter idiocy. And to think we once used the term "village idiot," with pity for the least among us. It's depressing enough that a major party nominates these troglodytes. Worse, however, is that nearly 50% of the population finds them attractive.

(and I think it was Robert Franklin) that "this is absolutely part of the continuing Republican scheme to do as much damage to the federal government as possible. Grover Norquist announced the policy 25 or so years ago as reducing the size of the federal government to where we could 'drown it in the bathtub.' The pattern is (1)deregulate a certain industry, (2) make enormous sums of money off the deregulation, (3) when the deregulated house of cards collapses, get bailed out by the taxpayers, which (4) increases federal government deficits which requires (5) a reduction in the size of the federal government."

Norquist has always seems to function as the elite's Moriarty to the peoples' Holmes, a lurking criminal who guides his crew of malefactors from behind the scene (although the analogy is decidedly imperfect, since Moriarty was eventually destroyed). Such "conservatives" desire the death of, especially, Medicare and Social Security. At this rate, that desire will be fulfilled if, indeed, it hasn't been already. Whether the term for this is socialism, nationalism or anything else seems to me largely beside the point. It is theft by any other name. That Democrats refuse to address this Norquistian goal is a demonstration of their embrace of this grand scheme. At this point, I suppose, that would surprise few.