Another letter-writer mentioned the Bush/Cheney state residency situation. Is it really that the courts were not sympathetic to challengers' argument, or that there were no committed challengers? I seem to remember the latter, but I don't have any actual documentation to back that up...

I think it's egregious that Bush and Cheney were allowed to run on the same ticket...the latter was clearly a resident of Texas. The point of the rule isn't to make sure the paperwork is correct...and it showed when both showed themselves to be so wholly beholden to Texas oil interests...

Can anyone tell me what Nader or Gonzalez have been up to since their last respective elections?

Also, I'm convinced that it's a right-wing Fox News conspiracy to elevate Nader to spoiler status so that McCain can win...because there's no other way he'll do it...

Good lord...why is it in this city (SF) someone always complains whenever the homeless have access to anything?

Don't give them voicemail boxes - they'll deal drugs!

Close the recycling center! It's only enabling the homeless to obtain money for drugs and alcohol!

Don't give them mental health services or drug treatment programs! They'll just fall off the wagon when they get out!

Don't build them shelters! They'll congregate!

Don't let them sleep in the public park! They might leave a few needles lying around! Oh, they have to go somewhere? Somewhere else!

What next? Don't give the homeless jobs? They'll just by booze?

If you don't give homeless people a way to get their own money, they'll panhandle. Without money, they can't get back on their feet. Without services, they can't get a handle on the problems that are contributing to their sad condition.

WHAT do you propose be done then?

State taxpayers pay for primaries? I guess that makes sense, now that I think about it. But it gives folks like Nader, who want more party involvement in politics, some more ammunition. "Hey, tired of paying TWICE for the Democratic primary? Vote Green."

And, he'd have a valid point to this fairly-anti-Naderite...why should taxpayers who are tired of the two-party system have to pay for their primaries?

Erm, while the starred letters are all lovely, they address the woman like she's writing to Carey Tennis. This is an excerpt from a book. The kid is probably 2 now. She's not really about to drop-kick a newborn down the street or anything...and anyone who is probably isn't sitting around reading Salon either...

The only person to whom these letters will be useful is about-to-be moms.

So I'm sure this has been said, but in case anyone needs a refresher at this point:

For those people who swear by airborne:

1. Ever heard of the PLACEBO effect? As in, if you believe something works, your body will actually make it work? Given that there is no medical evidence that it actually works, why aren't you addressing the possibility of the placebo phenomenon? I like the letter writer that compared it to a vitamin...that's all it is. I take Vitamin C whenever I feel a cold coming on, but I am consciously aware there's a good chance it won't do anything, and it doesn't promise me otherwise. Same goes for Zinc.

2. So, sure, maybe you like being fooled into feeling better. But for those who weren't "cured" by Airborne, they probably don't appreciate being told that taking it will "cure their colds." The issue is not as much about whether or not it works, but about the FALSE and MISLEADING advertising claims that Airborne makes. Airborne can continue to market itself as a vitamin, an immune booster, a homeopathic remedy. But don't tell me that a clinical study shows it will cure colds when the latter isn't true and the former hasn't happened.

Advertising is rapidly becoming the scourge of this country. Permitting false advertising (even when it does "no harm") takes us down a slippery slope to turn of the century quack claims. Aren't we all smarter than that by now?

corporate crony-ism at it worst...

OMG, I had a bunch of legs on a halfway-around-the-world flight this January, and each time I almost killed the people crowded around the baggage carousel...with. their. carts.

Rugh.

The amazing thing is that the FDA went to all the trouble to screen out all the usual suspects against cloned food and the *still* came out with the result that the vast majority don't want to eat cloned meat.

Plus, what if the FDA is just wrong? Saccharian (sp?) doesn't definitely cause cancer, but it's listed as an ingredient, with a warning. Why not do the same for meat, in such an untested area of the food supply?

I couldn't bring myself to read all *350* letters (why on earth you won't star when there are so many, especially in Glenn Greenwald, still baffles me), however, a comment:

How can you say that Obama's white, possibly racist grandmother is a "product of her time" and not somehow equally acknowledge that his pastor is too? If he grew up during segregation, knew people discriminated against or was discriminated against himself, has seen firsthand the unfinished business of the civil rights movement, how can you not somehow understand him as being "a product of his time" too? If he should be able to transcend it, so should she, and vice versa.

These people had their primary, they took steps to move it, that had their chance, now they're done. Michigan, and for god's sake Florida (yes, still angry at you for 2000), shut up and go away. You made this bed, now lie in it.

Voters, if you don't like it, vote OUT the people who did this the first time. Use your system (either state have props like CA?). But stop whining. What did you really think was going to happen when the primary moved??