The Neocons are idiots and fools whose ideology has been proven a failure and no one should give them attention any longer. May they become a historical footnote as soon as possible. They are the main reason why I no longer strongly identify as a Jew, and why I am not raising my children Jewish. Thanks Neocons!

I have this to say to them: If Israel is the most important state to you then YOU SHOULD LIVE THERE. According to the law of return you can do so easily enough. Take your birthright and use it to support Israel from within. Leave the rest of us the f*ck alone. I pay taxes to support the people of the United States, not Israel.

I think it's great for the President to address the nation's kids and the first day of school is the best time to do it. Every president should do it; it may not really help kids stay in school, but it will certainly help them get more exposure to the concept of government (for the younger ones). And I'm pretty sure that for many of the nation's minority children, seeing a black president speak to them may have some positive impact. My kids are white and I consider it a positive for them, too. Obama will be the first president they will remember in their lives. My first was Gerald Ford.

And now I'm going back for my third trip to my local Staples, where I will have spent more than $400 fulfilling the school supplies lists for each of my three children attending a NYC public school. Apparently our school, in one of the wealthiest zip codes in the country, can't even afford to buy its own pencils.

Question: In the current health care reform proposal, will people be taxed on their existing health insurance?

Just answer the question please.

Okay: YES

And guess what? I think that's fair. Any other questions?

Not only is McCaughey a lying sack of shit, she came onto TDS totally unprepared, and couldn't find the page she was quoting from for way too long--almost as if she didn't want Jon to actually read the words, she just wanted him to take her word for it that it said what she wanted it to say. A Fox News interviewer would have let her say whatever she wanted without even looking at the text. That's the standard of tv journalism these days, and Jon Stewart's "comedy" "fake news" once again calls attention to that by being one of the only tv news sources I can trust.

I think that the birthers, like any nut-job fringe group, should not be given any credibility whatsoever. That woman at Mike Castle's town hall who made everyone stand up for the pledge of allegiance? I think if I had been in that room I might have sneaked out. Horrible to see.

Why do the media skirt around what the real issue behind this "birther" nonsense actually is? It's fear and bittnerness that "their" team lost. But above all, it's racism. If our new president was white and born in Hawaii to an American mother and a European father, none of this would be an issue. I call BS on whether anybody from the left would be doing the same to John "Born in Panama" McCain.

The level of discourse on this comments thread is frighteningly low.

I should have known better than to click on an article containing the words "Pope" and "Jews" in the title. I am now sufficiently disheartened by the pathetic ignorance on display. For some reason I expect better from Salon readers. Lesson learned.

This thread goes on my ever-growing list of things to point to when people ask me why I am an atheist.

While not part of the highest stratosphere of Manhattan society, I live on the Upper East Side and share my world with many, many people who are now (or who were until recently) Wall Streeters. My children go to public school and there are plenty of parents in the public school community (both mothers and fathers) who work in banking and finance (not everyone--even in finance-- wants to or can afford to send their kids to private school). At a kids' birthday party this weekend I heard lots of talk about one (or both) of the spouses being laid off, the other having to look for extra work, and the juggling act of trying to recover from catastrophic job losses. While I doubt I would hear of marital problems in this particular venue, what I did hear was a sense of cooperation and familial responsibility. Whatever your job or income source is, when you lose it, it is difficult. It doesn't make it any easier at $150,000 than it is at $20,000--although I will concede that anyone making close to a million dollars a year should have a good amount saved up to live on for a while, or they are doing something wrong.

I agree that those ridiculous NY Times lifestyle stories are garbage, and we have been through this mill before. What I dislike is the tone that people take up that kind of reminds me of those culture-wars claims that cosmopolitan people aren't "real" people with "real" feelings and experiences like everyone else. This is anecdotal, but it has not been my observation that wealthy people are any quicker to get divorced than the less wealthy (I'd like to see statistics on this); and every woman married to an executive is not a gold digger, that's just silly. I guess these stupid NY Times stories don't help with this, though.

Just realized my letter above is mis-worded. I have no reason to doubt that Jackson's tears "weren't" put on, is what I meant to say!