What continues to surprise me is how people think that atheism and religious belief are necessarily incompatible and mutually exclusive.

Yeah. And it gets me when someone says that vegetarianism and eating steaks are mutually exclusive.

The Bible does say "the fool sayeth in his heart 'there is no god'". And science has disproved all relgious statements about the nature of reality.

Atheism should be something more interesting than merely replacing some Big Guy in the Sky with a Big Shrug at the center of Awe and going on with your life as if nothing happened.

Haha! Mathemeticians striving day and night to trace the movements of the sky back to their roots; house-sized telescopes in space probing the depths of reality; astronauts bringing rocks back from the Moon; all this is, apparently, just a "big shrug"--and not at all interesting.

If these books are half as bad as you make them sound, they deserve a takedown. Good job, Laura )

Also, they seem way too anti-feminist and conservative to fit my sociopolitical tastes.

Mormon author.

"Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism"

Hahaha!

I don't care if the Clintons are narcissitic, arrogant or whatever. What I care about are their policies

What?!? There's no room for logic in American politics! Sarah Palin is a woman, so women should support her!

Yet, Ms. Paglia cannot enter an arguement without starting with the Clinton's ambitions

Ambition bad! For the past 8 years we've had a president whose highest ambition was to play T-ball and clear brush on his ranch before the Supreme Court selected him to lead the most powerful nation on Earth. It's worked out great!

Myth #1: John McCain, who voted with Bush over 90% of the time, is a "maverick" who will go against the wishes of his own party.

fivethirtyeight.com has downgraded McCain's chance of winning from 1.9% to 1.1%. I'm not sure why.

I didn't have to wait very long either, fortunately. But next time I'll probably vote early by mail.

Brit Hume sure is boring. And does FoxNews recruit their anchorwomen from beauty pageants? Yikes.

MSNBC calls Pennsylvania for Obama.

Thanks for playing, McCain.

"McCain can still win if he takes the battlegrounds."

YEs but he needs them all. If Obama takes one, it's done.

Obama takes PN and leads FL and NC by 150,000 each. fivethirtyeight.com gives McCain a 1% chance of winning, and that's being generous.

My Gold Medal Moment: Brit Hume brings up the question of Sarah Palin and the conventional wisdom that she hurt McCain, then looks over at William Kristol who tries to will himself into invisibility for a moment.

"Chris Matthews is giving me a tingle "

Me too. This is pretty amazing. If I keep seeing black faces on my TV I think I'll break down like a baby.

"last night smugly predicted that Democrats who spent the last eight years opposing executive power expansions and an oversight-free Presidency will now reverse positions"

I voted for Obama, donated money I probably couldn't afford to Obama, and volunteered for Obama. And I say, get rid of those expansions of power.

Alright, I don't get it. What's the "joke at the end"?

One thing about teams with weird offenses: they defenses usually suck, since they never get a chance to practice against the type of offense they are going to see in an actual game. Teams that I've followed have tried to "spread the field" and "throw the ball all over the place". They usually go from losing 20-10 to losing 50-40.

That took a lot of integrity, Joe.

How dare anyone question General McCaffrey? He is a war hero, and war heroes are above any possible reproach.

Benedict Arnold V (January 14 1741 [O.S. January 3, 1740] – June 14, 1801) was a general during the American Revolutionary War . . . Arnold is considered by many to be the best general and most accomplished leader in the Continental Army. Without Arnold's earlier contributions to their cause, the American Revolution might well have been lost. . . Arnold distinguished himself early in the war through acts of cunning and bravery. His many successful campaigns included the Capture of Fort Ticonderoga (1775), victory at the Battle of Valcour Island on Lake Champlain in 1776, the battles of Danbury and Ridgefield in Connecticut (after which he was promoted to Major General) and the Battle of Saratoga in 1777.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedict_Arnold

Once someone is known as a military hero, it becomes impossible to question any of their motivations.

Malcolm called Clinton "an exceptional figure in American life,"

Boy, I'll say. How many people, when given the chance to vote on whether to give George W Bush the authority to conquer another country, wouldn't even read the relevant intelligence reports first? And how many people drove into the ground an effort to bring about national health care? Those are exceptional accomplishments, indeed.

"I listened hard to both candidates"

So did I. And Hillary Clinton told me not to vote for her. "If you don't like my stance on the Iraq invasion, choose another candidate." So I did.

Well said, bernbart. I don't recall a lot of firebrand proposals about women's rights from Hillary Clinton. I recall an anti-flag burning proposal, but no feminism.

Maybe things would have turned out differently if she hadn't hitched her wagon to Bill's star. Maybe she would have become a feminist leader. But she didn't.

"Or is this an admission that Republicans are far ahead of Democrats in promoting diversity in their party?"

Bwahahahahahaha!!! Thank you for that. A touch of levity is what this thread needed.