So far, so good. Michael Savage and Mark Levin are twisting themselves into pretzels over the horrible thought of a liberal hispanic woman on the Bench. Fuck 'em, but they are only helping the anti-Repugnicans among us.

tangerinespeedo, you wrote: "She ruled against a group of white firemen in Conn. who claimed Title VII racial discrimination, which will likely be overturned by the SCOTUS - this might be the reference, but I have not read the decision. Facts are ugly for those who believe in meritocracy as opposed to results."

You didn't read the opinion, so you don't know the facts. Perhaps the opinion was sound. If the Supremes should overrule this appellate decision, it won't be the first time in our history such has happened, but unless you can prove that so-called reverse discrimination was a factor, you have no rational basis to complain about the decision.

Attack this woman based on her gender and ethnicity (not to mention being born poor -- a mortal sin to the party of the wealthy, the GOP).

This will ensure that the Repugs dwindle down to their hardcore of regressive white males and the misguided women and non-whites who follow them. They, along with the greedy portion of our aristocratic class, do not a winning voting bloc make.

Of course, that leaves us with the incredible Big Business-obeying invertebrates known as the Democrats, but I'd rather fight to push them in the right direction, than fight to hold back a Repugnican party hellbent on destroying this nation in the name of Jesus and profits.

It is vitally important that we have an urban-centric President. Other Presidents may have grown up in cities, and certainly lived in them as adults, but they disavowed urbanites and embraced the mythological "real" Americans of the "Heartland" (as someone pointed out, the Palin creature used that tactic in the last campaign).

This has meant that urban needs were ignored or underfunded: mass transit, education, housing, to name a few, and also gun control; people living in rural areas often could not or would not understand that a barely regulated right to own arms has much different ramifications in crowded cities than it does in sparsely populated areas.

President Obama will, one hopes, lead the nation in an urban renaissance. For all the positives that come from rural areas, not least of which is our nation's food supply, urban area have historically been the engine of social and artistic and intellectual progress. Furthermore, as others have pointed out, now more than ever we need "green" sustainable cities fit for high density populations. We can no longer afford the far-flung, automobile-dependent suburbs, and we must not turn our remaining farmland and wilderness into yet even more misguided suburban outposts.

I grew up in the soul-killing suburbs and find them good for nothing. I live in the city and escape to the country, and I will support any politician who embraces and protects both of those places.

The United States' Fiscal Year 2009 "defense" budge is $515.4 billion. Supplemental appropriations bring that up to US$651.2 billion.

Add in spending on nuclear weapons and our wars in Iraq & Afghanistan, and other weapons/war-related items, and we are easily spending more than $1 trillion year for our military purposes.

Don't raise taxes on Americans to pay for health care. Take that money directly from our obscenely high Department of War -- sorry, Defense -- budget.

Like a big but stupid bully, the United States spends more on its military than all other nations combined, so while the civilized nations of the world use their tax dollars for universal health insurance, we use ours to make weapons manufacturers and their ilk extremely wealthy. It is time for that to end.

With all due respect to the people who live there, I'm tired of "America's Heartland" or "The Real America" being described as the small towns and rural areas of this country. We're no longer the nation of Spanky and Alfalfa going fishing after Miss Crabapple rings the school bell. America is now mostly urban an far more international in content, if not in outlook.

What bothers most is that many of our leading politicians are urban sophisticates who nevertheless have played the, "Aw shucks, I'm jes' folks card" (as do wealthy urban hatemongering entertainers like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter). It is a welcome relief, on top of many other welcome reliefs, to have a President who is from a large city and proud of that fact.

You wrote this:

The disparaging remarks, the dehumanization of Cheney and Bush, the outlandish insults are all telling qualities of the left.

And then a few sentences later you wrote this:

Try a little "silenced" and notice on TV every day our new President Flapdoodle spouting fatuous piddle, sanctimoneous blather, speechifying pish and vacuous platitudes. He pontificates while fat cat government and auto union goons smile as they beggar the taxpayers with their flaccid greed and their corrupt and selfish sloth.

Can you recognize the irony here?

You've taken an essay on mountain climbing and midlife crisis and turned it into a forum for your rightwing ranting. I concur with the others who noted that you may have reached middle age, but you act like an obnoxious teenager. That, perhaps not coincidentally, also explains your politics.