As a college professor, I can guarantee that most of the young voters will get to the polls at the last possible minute.

Don't you want to add maverick, socialist, and "drill, baby, drill" to the terms you never want to hear again? I could probably think of 50 others, too.

The person I'm grateful to is Elephantman, for bringing Sarah Palin to the repubs' attention and getting her on the ticket. Without her incompetence weighing McCain down, the unthinkable could have happened. And here we thought he was a Republican troll - he was actually a national hero under cover!

As happy as Obama's election has made me to be alive, I just can't look at a single face in the Bush White House, not even Colin Powell, without thinking the word: guillotine. After all, part of my joy over Obama (which has surprised even me with its intensity) is due to the fears I'd had for eight years that the country had been permanently taken over by criminals. Maybe I'll get over it someday.

Feels nice. We *were* part of something bigger back then, and you've made me understand why you guys didn't get it.

The most mystical words of my childhood:

Lest the awe should dwell

And turn your frolic to fret

You shall look on my power at the helping hour

But then you shall forget!

...forget, forget, they sigh, and it dies away in a rustle and a whisper.

I've believed in Pan ever since.

I had no idea where that was going....

Gillibrand has been my representative the last few years, and we've been very happy with her. She comes out and meets the public a lot, keeps the community informed on what she's doing, and seems smart, personable, and responsive. I'm frankly surprised to find she's considered conservative (I'm not at all, and Columbia County went for both Kerry and Obama), but our first reaction was that her selection was more than we'd dared hope for.

I'm trying to read the article, and all the links lead to:

"Hell hath no fury like a mommy scorned"

Focus, please?

You're the most important person in the country right now. The whole system clicks into focus when you describe it, and all the weirdness suddenly makes sense. Keep doing it.

I'm a few decades beyond dating, but I thought the article was cute. I only went on a blind date once. A friend thought we'd be perfect for each other. The date was thin, dry, snobbish, exacting, and talked nonstop about her patrician forbears who had come over on the Mayflower. Gradually I became depressed realizing what kind of person my friend thought I was.

Schumer also voted for the attempt by that Oklahoma redneck to keep all arts funding out of the stimulus package - for which, since he is my senator and since I and almost everyone I know makes their living in the arts, I sent him a letter of protest. Our new senator Kirsten Gillibrand voted to put the arts back in, for which I thanked her. Imagine a senator representing New York City and voting against arts funding - I'll be thrilled to see Schumer go some day. Seems like I write him some angry letter every few months.

How precisely will using borrowed money to fund "the arts" (a slippery term if ever there was one) stimulate the economy? Why should my children and grand-children have to pay higher taxes so some prima donna can go around smearing feces on herself.

Get a real job and stop whining.

-- Slim Pickins

Thousands of violin teachers, dance teachers, stage-set crew members, newspaper critics, and others are losing their jobs across the country, and all you know about the arts is an anti-NEA talking point you read in a Donald Wildmon leaflet in 1989.

And our social values are equally center-right, as could be seen as so many people rose to the defense of Miss California, Carrie Prejean, after she stated her opposition to same-sex marriage in the Miss USA pageant. She may have lost the crown, but I think she won the country.

Glenallen Walken is really Steve Martin, right?

If not, then Bill Murray? Somebody known for his deadpan funniness, anyway.

I agree strongly with what someone said about this column last time: there's no attempt whatever to acknowledge what liberals believe and think, no attempt to gently show us where we're wrong, no admission of our valid points, no attempt to sort out what different grounds the other argument might occupy - just, here are the same old committee-determined talking points you've already heard served up again, and (arrogantly) "I hope this helps." If these unreflective, undigested, long-discredited bromides could help now, they would have helped the first 1200 times we read them elsewhere.

LBJ did some great things for the country for utterly self-serving reasons. That's what I want a politician to do: make life better for millions of people because it's in his self-interest to do so. I liked Edwards because he located his self-interest in helping the poor, which is a hell of a lot better than locating it in helping big corporations. Plenty of sincerely altruistic people never do anything to improve the world because they're not selfishly driven to get themselves into positions of power.