I don't doubt for one minute that the GOP would welcome another 9/11.

The Party of Fear is desperate.

The problem with Beck and people like him is that they whip up the lunatic fringe and we all know what that group is capable of doing. When your message is built upon anger and the fears of the public nothing constructive results, except the fattening of Fox bank accounts.

I don't like censorship so an aggressive repudiation of the likes of Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh, O'Reilly is really an effective way to keep these people on the defensive. They'll react with even more heavy-handed commentary and that will marginalize them.

The vast majority of Americans and close to 100% of the rest of the world consider these fools for what they are - bad actors making big money because of the gullibility of an under-educated audience.

I see that this is your first letter to Salon and, judging by its content, I hope that it is the last.

Thank you for the very brief insight into the mentality of the dittoheads.

Now that you have read Dr. Laura's book, read another. I recommend "I'm OK, You're OK" by Thomas Harris, M.D.

He puts bias under the microscope and analyzes how that bias degrades communication.

After reading that book one understands the damage that is done by media whores on all sides of the political spectrum.

The conservatives' world of constant paranoia and shoot-from-the-hip quick-fixes for made-up problems keeps their media whores gainfully employed. Fortunately, they mostly are preaching to their own choir.

Many of my Republican friends and relatives are employed in the public sector - some receiving very generous civil service pensions - and some are in the medical profession with many patients receiving Medicare, Medicaid, or MediCal benefits. Republican business owners decry taxation but gladly accept government contracts. Republicans gladly drive over roads and bridges paid for with tax revenues, with the assurance that government inspectors will ensure their safety. The conservatives' mantra pushing "personal freedom free of government interference" stops at fertility clinics, meaningful drug law overhaul, the right to end ones own life, pushing religion into schools, censuring textbooks, their hostility towards labor unions, and more.

Food and medicine safety in the US has largely been ensured via government oversight (at least until the G.W. Bush Administration gutted the government inspection programs).

When the GOP trotted out Sarah Palin and sandbagged McCain I realized how shallow and desperate the Republicans had become. McCain's message of the "big tent" was instantly rendered moot.

Conservative media crybabies are the Achilles Heel of the Republican Party. Their world is not the world that the vast majority wants today.

Obama is doing just fine. Thank God he is not perfect. Rather, he is thoughtful and methodical. This may not be apparent to folks who believed Bush's "Mission Accomplished" banner, however.

"If I would have said we're going to have a president elected,

And he is going to bring us to the verge of shredding

The Constitution, of massive socialism, and he'll do it in

The first six weeks in office, I would have been told I was crazy." Beck.

Is this man crazy?

Or is my memory hazy

because the previous president

was not hesitant

to bend and break the rules

with the blessing of GOP fools.

Perhaps Obama is on the right track, after all?

demands that we live in 3,000 square foot houses, drive one car and one large SUV military-style road crusher, live far enough away from vital services that it takes three gallons of gas to buy one quart of milk. It requires that we shun public transportation, no matter how much more it costs us to drive 25 miles to our jobs.

We spend huge amounts of our time sitting in traffic, often because of delays caused by perpetual road-building so even more of us can sit in traffic.

We are giving up our humanity because our true religion is materialsm, and we are living in a house of cards because this lifestyle is simply not sustainable.

Democracy be damned.

I know that conservatives favor overly simplistic answers to problems but this article does nothing to convince us otherwise.

Liberals favor nuance, and this encourages thought on the part of the reader. Most of us want to be treated as adults, not as children being told what to think by people pushing narrow-minded agendas.

That might explain why a majority of true journalists appear to be "liberal" when reporting on complex issues. There is usually more to the story than the headline.

Ayers is either a former foaming-at-the-mouth killer planting bombs in the hope of killing and maiming as many people as possible, or he was caught up in wave of protesting that eventually helped cause the end of the Vietnam War.

If it was the latter, he was part of a noble cause and less guilty than someone flying a jet dropping bombs on civilian targets.

Idiots with AK47s do not make us safer. Rather the opposite is true. There is not one example of gun ownership making the USA safer from terrorist attacks, missle attacks, or a foreign invasion, unless the invaders will be using canoes and bows and arrows.

Accidental injury and death from mishandled guns and the readily available guns used in countless crimes give lie to the idea that gun ownership for "protection" is a good idea.

The few cases that can be cited in favor of guns' viability in protecting citizens is far outweighed by the damage and death that firearms cause.

We are the most violent society in the Free World. We have more people in prisons and we have more violent crime and we have higher casualties often because of the use of firearms.

Obviously the NRA paranoids will not agree with this. They live in another world, after all.