...to give a big round of applause to Kaykuri! Arguably the best comments to any articles here on Salon about this mess.

Excellent question, assuming you're correct. But the answer is obvious, isn't it? One thing you can say for monied interests: Unlike labor they have genuine and unshakable solidarity. GMAC and commercial banks will continue to refuse loans until their big brothers at financial institutions and investment banks get the bailout they're demanding. Then, suddenly, the floodgates will open. Just watch.

Folks, if credit-worth borrowers are being denied credit, and large, solvent corporations are likewise being credit, it is because there is now a...

CAPITAL STRIKE ON!!

...and unlike a general strike, where things go back to normal right away once it's over, a capital strike of this magnitude means that the commercial and institutional lenders are essentially saying to all of us:

If our big brothers in finance and investment banks don't get the bailout they want, we'll see to it that YOU starve.

Amspeck should get a red star for their Dachau analogy.

"Governor Palin, do you believe that human beings and dinosaurs co-existed on the earth six thousand years ago?"

If she answers in the affirmative, game over.

...were a set-up have been proven correct. There is no way that the verbal stumble-bum of Katie Couric's interviews somehow morphed into the poised, polished debater of tonight.

The Republicans tried to pull one of the biggest stunts in the history of debates, and damn didn't Joe Biden nip them in the bud!!

Biden wiped the floor with Palin, and he did it with a great, big smile. God bless him, and god bless the Democratic party. I'm actually beginning to believe!

Like you, I - who was first able to vote in 1982 - have seen the Reaganite horseshit for what it was from almost the beginning. It has been terrible, lo these many years, to watch as greedy and avaricious bitches and bastards came to the for and ruined this country.

But as you wrote, no more.

It is time to formally declare that the United States will begin the process of transforming itself into a Social Democracy along Scandinavian lines. This will take time and incredible effort, but it will be worth it.

I have a cousin who is married to a Dane and lives in Copenhagen. He went from being a rock-ribbed Republican to a gorgeously flaming liberal by virtue of seeing how wonderful a society, properly run, could be. I think it's high time that we all took a hard look at what it is, exactly, that makes the United States "special" - especially bad, that is, for those whose pockets are not eternally stuffed with cash.

It is time to remake our nation, and our economy. And to those who would criticize me in the usual way, I have only this to say:

Effective this date, you have ZERO credibility

Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann were both part of the Orange County right-wing mafia (like George Schultz) who were determined to destroy the New Deal. They started in 1966, with the election of Ronald Reagan. I could go on, but there's not enough space. Read Haynes Johnson's book Sleepwalking Through History. It is absolutely essential to understanding how we got into this mess.

I was between 7th and 8th grade when Proposition 13 passed in June of '78. When I returned to my junior high school in September it was like a fiscal neutron bomb had been detonated. The curriculum was destroyed. There weren't enough teachers, and the teachers we did have had their salaries cut to the point that they were having to bunk four or five to a rented house. My sister, a special needs child, went from having the help she needed to having NONE. UCLA and UC Berkeley went from being incredibly affordable to NOT.

And then, not satisfied, Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann proposed Jarvis-Gann II (or "Jaws II", as my teachers referred to it). Our teachers warned that there wouldn't be any schools open anymore if it passed. They told us to warn our parents. We did, en masse, state-wide. And, thank God, J-G II was defeated. Howard Jarvis went on to be Ronald Reagan's Presidential Campaign Manager for the state of California in 1980.

It is time now to undo what those monsters did. Time for social democracy.

...but, Anne, let's not rewrite history. This...

Even though Molly was a Texan -- who would have been on guard for the sneering tone of liberal criticism toward anyone with a gun or a double-wide -- she still would have obliterated Palin as a faux populist wingnut with a tanning bed instead of a heart.

...is just plain wrong. Ivins was one of the most stridently pro-gun control advocates in this country. I remember the night in 1995 when, as a guest on Nightline, she told Ted Koppel that anyone who was against gun control legislation must be forced to wear a propeller beanie. I know she was joking about the beanie requirement, but not about its implication.

Meanwhile, I too miss her in this insane age we live in. We could all use her counsel.

But Ms. Zacharek has her head up her ass if she believes that BOTH "Philadelphia" and "Silence of the Lambs" are "stiff excercises."

I'm not saying they're classics, but they're far from "stiff excercises."

Joe, you have no idea.

I have a YouTube account that is pretty active. Like most active YouTubers, I get lots and lots of haters. Most of them, though not all, are American. And their incoherence, their inability to form a simple, complete sentence, more than answers your question.

It's her complete lack of talent. Like all those on SNL during the Tina Fey Years (roughly '95 to '07), she was and remains God-awful. But the industry troika of Michaels-Brillstein-Grey keeps them employed. Now that Bernie's dead perhaps we won't have so many of them foisted on us, but I'm not holding my breath.