I regret voting for Nader in 2000 (in a state--NY--where Bush didn't stand a chance) because it encouraged his incredible ego. However, I my reasoning has been vindicated: Gore sold his soul by choosing a running mate who seemed a small step away from being a Republican--ladies and gentlemen, I give you John McCain and the Iraq/Iran war's biggest fan: Joe Lieberman.

So, apparently a significant amount of Hillary's supporters are racists and/or war supporters. I don't know if she should be bragging about that.

I find it ironic that a Women's Center would support this. Muslim rules about women's modesty, like similar strictures in other religions, are about protecting men from temptation, NOT protecting women. In fact, such restrictions go hand in hand with the notion that men can't be expected to control themselves when they see women who are not properly covered up and, therefore, such women are asking to be raped. Feminists, I think, make a big mistake when they ally with religious conservatives of any stripe.

Who cares?!

Ummm...Glenn, dude, I basically agree with you about this but...are you really so unfamiliar with the customs of this country? Let me explain: in America, putting your dick where it doesn't belong is a much bigger issue than dropping thousands of bombs where they don't belong. You should've learned that around the time you learned to say the pledge of allegiance and didn't learn any languages other than English.

The answer to the "searching questions" raised in the media about Silda Spitzer is the same to those constantly raised about other celebrities' personal lives: human relationships are extremely complex, and you really can't tell much of anything from what's presented publicly. In other words, nobody who doesn't know the Spitzers intimately has anything intelligent to say on the subject. It sure does sell papers, though....

Is Michelle Malkin showing her bias really news? Or even notable? The woman's made a career out of pretending that only Democrats/liberals are capable of corruption/dishonesty/having s**t that stinks. Is a piece proving Coulter or Limbaugh's bias next?

"We need a woman to clean it up?" Good god...

Apparently the epitome of Joan's idea of a "tough" question would be something along the lines of "have you stopped beating your wife?" Obama should be commended for trying to rise above the garbage.

In the words of noted misogynist Johnny Rotten:

"they're pret-ty

pretty vacant"

I'm certainly disappointed in Obama here, both in the morality and plain poor judgement of his decision. At the same time, seeing the extreme-I'm gonna vote for McCain even though he's against everything I believe in because Obama isn't perfect--responses of so many progressives, I can't help wondering if it might be a good thing for him to do something so bad at this point. Way too many people have been seeing Obama as some kind of liberal messiah, a prince charming who'll give progressives everything they dream of while floating above the ugly world of politics. But messiahs and fairy tale princes don't get elected president--never have and never will--not because our system is so corrupt (though it is) but because democracy is inherently about making compromises, and often very cynical ones, and nobody who isn't at least a semi-sociopathic egotist would seriously want to be president of the United States. Whoever's going to get elected in November--and I certainly hope it's Obama--is going to be a politician, just like all the presidents before him, just like all the "outsiders" and "mavericks" in the house and senate. That's democracy. That's reality. Grow up and deal with it.

Another poster mentioned leading Republicans' paeans to Jesse Helms, and I can't help wondering if this is in fact their way, since they know they have no hope of getting African Americans to vote for them, of shoring up the racist base--to celebrate a man who ironically died on July 4th despite having done so much to prevent the nation from living up to the high ideals of the Declaration of Independence, and to go so far as to call it fitting. The Republicans know that their most potent weapon against Obama is racism, and they're going to use it.

Wow...I've never seen such puritanical attitudes toward female sexuality expressed in such a crude and pornographic manner. Then, maybe I haven't listened to enough gangsta rap...

Michael, I'm with ya until your next to last sentence:

"When, inevitably, the occasional populist protest figure like Perot, Dobbs or Huckabee appears, the affluent progressives quickly close ranks with the corporate conservatives."

Are you f-ing serious? Perot, who was about as much a plutocrat as anyone who ever tried to buy his way to the White House with his own billions? Dobbs the corporate bigot? Huckabee whose tax plan would have, while helping the poor, been a bigger bonanza for the rich than W's tax cuts? If those are populists, I'll stick with the "affluent progressives."

I will shed exactly one tear for Jesse Helms--specifically for the fact that he died before he could see a black man sworn in as president. Instead, we get the irony of a man who did so much to prevent his country from living up to its founding ideals dying on July 4th. So it goes.

A "special effects" movie that makes you forget it's a "special effects" movie? Hmmmm...that is novel. Wasn't there a time, once, when special effects were, like, kinda, an "element" of a movie, like dialogue or characterization, that was used to forward the plot and make extraordinary events more realistic, rather than the whole basis of a movie (or perhaps creating a new category not quite the same as a movie, the "special effects trade show")? Those were the days....