Prop 13 should not benefit commercial or rental property owners that have the ability to adjust the rental rates they charge tenants.

Prop 13 should not benefit property owners of second homes acquired through inheritance. More often than not these homes are kept and used as rentals.

Pensions paid to retired state employees are far too generous, often amounting to full pay plus extensive healthcare benefits.

You make an excellent case for the stuupidity of the American people. As if our TV faire and the twice-elected Bush aren't enough we have Fox news and its parrots providing biased and unfounded commentary.

This is supposed to enlighten an audience? Not really. It is designed to inflame and it is designed to feed the fears of the ignorant and the uninformed.

If Rush Limbaugh's supposed 50 million viewers are true "dittoheads" then America is in serious trouble as a world leader. Even now, the world views us as a bunch of spoiled, illiterate brats with a broken economic system, a failing automoble industry, a failed healthcare system, and airwaves polluted with Fox News commentators beating their chests about American superiority while spouting hate and misinformation.

I suggest that the single factor contributing the most to divisiveness and ignorance in America is the kind of biased commentary coming from the extreme right that is appealing to an undereducated, fearful American public.

You wrote this in a previous post:

"Since I discovered Salon - not so long ago -I determined that Joan Walsh is a scholar and a lady. Tonight on O'Reilly she proved me to be correct."

So I wonder, why the sudden, Palin-like, change of heart?

Here's this mother and housewife who happens to be the governor of a state and is married to an ultra right-wing weirdo that believes that the very state she is governing should secede from the union and she is tapped to run for vice president of the United States of America on the McCain ticket.

I mean, holy cow Batman, can someone's life get more complicated? Yes, it can, when the mother's daughter is pregnant, unmarried and breaking up with a loser boyfriend, and there is more. Now, we learn that she wanted McCain's staff to lie about her husband because, you see, having such a person so close to someone in the highest levels of government is just not going to sit well with thinking Americans. How can we identify whether an American is a thinking one? Well, one that does not watch Fox News is a good first test.

You'll have to pardon the clumsy segway into mentioning Fox News but that has been suggested as a possibility for the employment of Sarah.

None of this bodes well for the struggling Republican Party. If its lack of relevance, and recent scandal is not enough, Republicans now have to contend with a rogue Republican governor whose very name causes a roomful of people to immediately divide and line up against opposite walls.

Move to Alaska.

Oops! Palin is quitting. Better not.

We bought our first house in Foster City and we watched our property taxes increase by huge amounts each year. We sold the house and moved to a less expensive one but our propert taxes kept increasing at an alarming rate.

We took extra jobs just to pay the taxes and keep our house.

Proposition 13 saved the day but it was too broad in scope because it included commercial and rental properties. This was unfair because property tax is a pass-through to tenants and it is covered by income in retail and wholesale, and it is factored into manufacturing costs.

The individual homeowner, however, does not have the ability to mitigate taxation by those methods and should therefore be the only recipient of the Prop 13 benefit.

Rush is a multimillionaire because one can never underestimate the intelligence of the American public.

This fact is proven many times over in our choice of TV programs, the existence of the Republican Party, the popularity of professional wrestling, and the twice-elected George Bush.

So, when Palin came out swinging during the presidential campaign she didn't set the tone for the McCain camp?

Perhaps she got what she deserved - rejection by thinking voters and much blame from Republicans for McCains' failure to be elected.

Don't cry for Palin. I have a sickening feeling that she and Fox are cooking something up.

and look in the mirror.

Suppose the GOP ploy for 2012 is to push Sarah into the spotlight as a foil, to distract the media (easily done, by the way) whilst the really nefarious stuff is being planned.

Watch out, I see the GOP Dirty Tricks Brigade at work.

"Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending soldiers out on a task that is from God. That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan." --Sarah Pailn, on the Iraq war, speaking to students at the Wasilla Assembly of God, June 2008.

The first test of a person's sanity should be the question "Does God reveal war plans to you?".

Clearly, Sarah fails this test as do too many others.

She may be up there ....

Both cite admiration for Palin and this puts them at odds with the fact that she is not fit to serve national public office.

Go to Factcheck.org and read the quotes attributed to Palin. Any thinking person would see that she is hopelessly encumbered by wrongheaded religion and extreme ideology. The perfect Republican? Perhaps this is why the GOP is failing as a Party.

Are we really taking Rush seriously? If we are, we are recognizing that his following puts him in a position of real power in Republicanland. And if this is true, what does that say for the future of rational politics in America?