I think the reason there was no comparable outcry over A Time To Kill is pretty obvious. You dance around the reason in your letter ("blonde and blue-eyed") but let's, um, call a spade a spade, shall we? As far as right-wingers are concerned, raping a black girl is just some good ol' boys having some harmless fun.

Glenn, while I agree with everything you wrote here, I urge you not to go along with the Republican talking point of using "elite" as a slur. I'm well aware that it's a word with multiple meanings, and under one of those meanings your description of the chattering class as elite is accurate. The problem is that such rhetoric is easily tied in with the GOP's faux-populist anti-elitism: "I won't vote for Obama because he's an elitist," etc.

The problem here is that when it comes to electing the President and members of Congress, every sane person ought to be an elitist. We shouldn't be voting on the basis of who we want to have a beer with. We should be electing the absolute smartest, best-educated people with the widest range of viewpoints and understanding. To borrow a metaphor from another meaning of "elite," we don't need a regular grunt (or fighter jock!) President, we need a goddamn Green Beret President.

As with the word "liberal," I really think we need to take this word back. I'm not exactly sure how to do that, but it seems to me that not using it as an insult would be a good start.

Can you allow yourselves to consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, Clinton is a patriotic American who believes that an Obama Presidency would be better for her country than a McCain Presidency? That there's no ulterior motive or mindless obedience to sexism in her actions? That she simply doesn't want -- as no sane American should want -- another four years of Bush-style policies wrecking our nation? That she genuinely wants her supporters to vote for Obama because he's the best choice remaining?

Are these possibilities simply beyond your ability to comprehend?

Like a lot of Salon readers, I'm getting a bit tired of "all Palin all the time," but there are at least three good reasons why articles like this one continue to be useful:

- As other readers have pointed out, the MSM isn't doing any real dirt-digging at all on Palin (or McCain, for that matter.) Getting the word out about just how corrupt she is gives Salon readers ammunition for the proverbial water-cooler discussions, and that may just possibly change some low-information voters' minds between now and November.

- Salon readership is mostly Democratic, but, as the letters sections continue to demonstrate, not entirely. At least a few Republican readers might learn something they didn't know about their candidate, and since pretty much everything that's come about Palin's performance as a mayor and governor is negative, that can't hurt. The right-wing trolls will never change their minds, of course, but is it too much to hope for that there still a few thoughtful, principled conservatives out there?

- There is a very good chance that Palin is running for President. McCain is old and sick; he is more likely to die in office than any major-party candidate in living memory (yes, including Reagan in 1984; Reagan was older then than McCain is now, but he didn't have anything like McCain's terrible health history.) If he wins, and then dies and leaves us with President Palin, at least we'll have a little more information to help us anticipate the actions of the stunningly incompetent and corrupt regime which will inevitably follow.

Most of the letters from self-proclaimed PUMAs here are pretty clearly from right-wing trolls reciting Republican talking points; the authors are people who would never have voted for any Democrat, Obama or Clinton or anyone else. But it is possible that there are still a few Clinton supporters here who are inclined to vote for Palin out of a combination of frustration at the Democratic nomination process and a desire to see a woman, any woman, on the winning ticket. If articles like this one manage to persuade even a few such readers of what a terrible mistake it would be to vote for McCain/Palin on that basis, then they've served their purpose.

Here you go.

http://www.nationinstitute.org/p/schanberg09182008pt1

I'm doing my best to make sure my fellow vets get the word on this one.

"Let me just ask the Obama followers this: If John McCain had had lunch in 1996 with, say, David Duke, would there not be a tremendous public outcry?"

In fact, McCain has associated himself on the campaign trail with extremist preachers such as Hagee and Parsley, who are much more extreme than Obama's albatross Wright. Left-wing publications such as Salon have pointed this out, but strangely the mainstream "liberal media" -- which whipped itself into a frenzy about Wright -- has remained silent.

If you really think Obama is a "far-left wing extremist" because of something his pastor said, but you can't see how much of his soul McCain has sold to the religious right, then you are simply not paying attention.

We need, in fact, to make the terms onerous enough to keep participation as narrow as possible. Firms which can survive in no other way will buy in to the plan -- limits on executive compensation, government equity, judicial oversight, and all. Firms which can survive without buying in will have strong incentive to avoid the plan, which means that the American people don't have quite as large a bill to pay. Everybody wins ... except of course the executive class which Bernanke and Paulson seem to believe it is their duty to serve.

Absolutely.

Now, if Bill would just get on board ...