Idaho had (just under) 1.3 million people in 2000. Idaho is represented by two Senators and two House members, and thus has four electoral votes, which works out to one vote per 325,000 Idahoans. California, meanwhile, has one electoral vote for every 628,000 Californians. Thus the good people of Idaho command nearly twice the voting power of their more tolerant and enlightened fellow citizens in California.

THIS is why the U.S. Congress spends most of its time coming up with new ways to restrict women's reproductive rights, rather than, say, hold Bush-Cheney accountable for the total absence of WMD and any connection to 9/11 in Iraq, despite half a million deaths (so far).

Democracy doesn't work in America, because democracy doesn't exist in America.

Major League Baseball lost me a long time ago. It's the big v. small market thing, and the lack of any meaningful revenue sharing. But I grew up with baseball, and on some level will always love the game. (I REALLY enjoyed that international competition last spring; has there ever BEEN finer defensive baseball than was played by the Koreans?) I (still) don't understand all the hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth concerning Barry Bonds.

Has he been caught doing something prohibited by MLB, according to the procedures established by MLB for detecting such prohibited acts? Has he been convicted in court of a crime? Yes? Then he should receive the appropriate punishment(s). No? Then what's the big deal? Has the presumption of innocence, too, been whisked away to Gitmo in the middle of the night? Jeez, I'm starting to understand how Lance Armstrong must feel.

MLB could learn a lot from the NFL in this regard. In the meantime, enjoy your Gints, Gary. By the way, I hear Babe Ruth wasn't much of a role model, either. But he was fun to watch.

Jeez Joe, how much money have the republicans lavished on attack ads this year? How much protective body armor could have been purchased instead with all of that money?

How much time have you yourself wasted in Salon calling other people names? If you don't want to volunteer for Iraq, that's cool; but how many of the 20,000 newly-disabled vets could you have visited and possibly cheered-up in that time?

Talk about ugly choices. If you and the other gung-ho jingos had spent even one-tenth the time you waste fighting the libs in fighting the true enemy, Osama bin-Forgotten would be dead and al-Qaeda would no longer threaten the West. Instead, you profess blind support for the GOP chickenhawks whose lies about non-existent WMD and connections to 9/11 [read:oil] have killed as many as 600,000 mostly innocent people, with no end in sight.

Bad decisions, Joe.

As fate would have it, 'Today' this morning mentioned the severance packages of several recently-fired celebrity CEO's, and included HP's payout, described as $42 million. Carly wasn't named, however; so it might've referred to another "failed" master of the universe.

$42 million or $20 million, post-Reagan CEO's occupy a rarified atmosphere, akin to royalty, in which the difference between success and failure is unimaginable wealth versus even more unimaginable wealth. The absence of real accountability attracts powerful friends: and while the GOP is busy eliminating taxes on her bonanza, Rush Limbaugh will be working himself into a lather telling the rubes without health care that greed is good. Whatever gender issues may or may not have plagued her reign (which sounds like a reign of terror), winning the corporate lottery is the real truth about Carly.

Hold the phones: A court just ruled that the former head of the NYSE might have to give back up to $100 million of his $180 million payout as "excessive". Never mind, I guess.

I've listened to most of Rush Limbaugh's shows during the past two and a half weeks. Three things struck me:

1) How partisan he is. Don't laugh: I imagined him as a right-wing conservative; but as PGroce pointed out, he's not about principles at all. He's just an advocate for the GOP.

2) How boring he is. Because of his relentless partisanship, his positions are completely predicable. Republicans arr right, Democrats are wrong, Bill Clinton is the Devil. (Yawn.)

3) How defensive he is. Right-wing republicanism, ascendant throughout his radio career, peaked with the neo-fascism of Bush-Cheney, and jumped the shark with Terri Schiavo. Now he's finally on the defensive; and like all bullies, he can dish it out but can't take it.

His extremism, titillating at first, quickly settles into a predictable pattern. A large portion of every show is devoted to convincing the rubes how well off they are. They might not have health care or good paying jobs, but if they work hard and vote GOP, they too can grow up to be Ken Lay or Jack Abramoff. It's like "What's The Matter With Kansas?" in action.

The question I have, after listening for two weeks, is not why there is no left-wing version of the right-wing noise machine. After all, I (and I dare say we) want the truth, not faith. The question I have is, who exactly is his audience (and how can these people be so stupid)? The answer has to begin with John Dean's recent work on the authoritarian personality.

I know next to nothing about HP; but this article and especially the responses it has generated are among the most interesting things I've read recently. The whole story is right here, not just of what has happened to the American economy since Reagan, but also of gender relations in America, and how the corporate media covers both. That is to say, always from the point of view of the celebrity CEO's, and almost never from the point of view of their employees -- especially those who have been laid off without the benefit of $20 million severance packages. None of which is meant as a knock on Rebecca Traister, but rather as praise of Salon for providing this forum for reader feedback.