and if I have to hear her voice after Nov. I will simply cease to watch political news.

tax cuts do not create jobs. republicans have a worse job creation record than democrats.

her "folksiness" looks like pure manipulation to me.

she also reminds me of the bitches in high school that you avoid (I'm a female and I'm using that term f2f - women who are bitches to other women).

Thoughtful. I think you've channeled the zeitgeist.

the characters in the movie are messed up - both those who smoke and those who don't. the satire was about the hypocrisy of affluent suburbia - now downwardly mobile and scrambling.

The music is great for this entire series.

Sarah did inquire into banning books. Just that www list was bogus, not the inquiry. And then Sarah fired the librarian, but the town gave her back her job the next day.

Yes. And republicans try to gloss over this as though it's a little nothing, but it is not for librarians. People who advocate an extremist branch of fundamentalism don't go around asking librarians about banning books just for the opportunity to make casual conversation.

For a librarian, such a question would set off red flags whether that person were a liberal or a conservative. Liberals have tried to ban books for other reasons (Huck Finn, for example, b/c of the language) and if a liberal came to a librarian and asked how that person felt about banning books, the red flag would be the same.

If the person is a political figure with a right wing agenda, then it would be against the history of censorship to assume she did not want an opportunity to pander to the religious right... if she wanted to ban this man's book for personal reasons, that would seem to fit in with many of her other actions as both mayor and gov. She has shown she is vindictive with many personal moments she chooses to politicize.

My opposition to Palin is grounded in my life-long knowledge of Pentacostals, other fundamentalists, evangelicals, and the most dangerous christian cult at this time: Dominionists. While I understand that it is offensive to pentacostals to hear them dismissed, the fact is that the radical Christian right has become a danger to democracy in the eyes of those who honor democracy and our tradition of secular government.

As a mother, I do not want any woman in office who wants to be able to deny my 12 y/o daughter a morning after pill if she were raped. If Palin wants to force such a horror story on her child, that's her family's life... sadly. These religious extremists want to deny morning-after pills because they *might* cause a female to expel a blastocyte.. an undifferentiated mass of cells.

this is a heretical position too... the idea that a one-day old fertilized egg has the same rights as a 12 y/o human.

Palin's positions on cultural issues make it impossible for this woman to EVER support her. In additionk, she showed she was too ignorant about the most imp. foreign policy issue of the last 8 years.

She is frightening because, yes, she is attractive and personable and has great stories to tell and calls people "guys and gals," and all of this has NOTHING to do with the ability to serve as vp/president. She's frightening because more Americans pay attention to American Idol than they do to policy issues.

She and McCain are trying to run on the SAME ideas as those that are now in place while arguing that they are "mavericks" -- this is simply bullshit. They are running against their own platform. How many Americans are stupid enough to fall for this?

re: library book banning

this was before the Web changed everything and pushed libraries near the bottom of any cultural battleground for free speech.

so cal - libraries/librarians remain at the forefront of free speech issues. Libraries are at the forefront of web free speech issues b/c libraries are not simply about books anymore.

The Patriot Act abuses of various amendments (privacy is as imp. as free speech in a democracy) have had impacts on libraries across the nation. Librarians have to deal with requests to ban books as well as requests to violate citizens' privacy - with the threat of prison as a consequence for the failure to comply. Speaking about these (specific) violations is also a crime. These violations have occurred, however, and as far as I know, a few librarians are the only ones who have challenged this act by speaking out.

Libraries pay for subscriptions to various reference dbs that are too expensive for one person to pay for by her/himself and they provide access to these dbs to patrons. Academic libraries constitute an entirely different sector - what's known as "the hidden web," with subscriptions to even more journals and other materials that most in this nation would have no access to at all without library services.

In addition, libraries stock media materials that may not be available, or not widely available, via business outlets as a service to patrons. Patrons may directly request particular materials and as many of those materials as is possible, within increasing budgetary constraints, are made available.

The groups that are traditionally the most vulnerable to being left behind by tech changes - the poor and the elderly - have access to computers and to instruction on how to use those computers through local libraries. Sometimes this is the only access poorer people have.

These are important functions of today's libraries. The idea that libraries are simply about hard-copy materials is outdated. Maintaining primary source documents is another important function of certain libraries, but not public ones.