As Paul Begala points out, there is nothing wrong with being beautiful.

However, there IS SOMETHING WRONG with it being a criteria on which women get elected, hired or otherwise favored.

Thirty years ago, I was denied a TV job (with a degree in broadcast journalism) because they wanted "to hire a model". They did and she could barely recite her own name. Today, the beautiful airheads make women look irrelevant, while it is possible to be a fat, balding troll AND be successful in media if you are a man.

I'm NOT saying all beautiful women are airheads. It's possible to have it all. However, power shouldn't be the reward of beauty...it should be the reward of brains and capability.

Just consider...Republicans were merciless over Janet Reno. But when did anyone poke fun at Karl Rove's looks?

Although it nauseates me that the McCain campaign engages in blatantly deceptive negative ads, it nauseates me even more that they work on a thoughtless and intelletually lazy public who prefers the National Enquirer to the New York Times.

Obama needs to fight back the way John Kerry didn't. If that involves wallowing in the mud...so be it. Let's start putting a little lipstick on some pigs for figuratively real and see if the public will serve up the pork at their next Tupperware party.

Sling it, Barack. It's sadly what has to be done. It's the nation we have become. Get in the game and play by their own rules. Democrats never seem to learn that nice guys really do finish last, and taking the high road will leave the rest of us drowning in the flood of Republican excess, extremism and mismanagement.

Since you've taken the publicity and assumed the credit for hyping Sarah Palin onto the national stage...we all know who you are.

So why don't you just use your name and admit your monumental preference for petty conservative gamesmanship over common sense or common good.

I thought the picture of you on the old homestead was particularly telling. To borrow from a well-known comedian...If you blog about Sarah Palin from the backwoods farm with stars in your eyes, you just might be a Republican redneck.

it is truly amazing that John McCain is now offering to put on a red cape and flash back to Washington when he is so desperately needed to save us all. The military guy didn't even bother to cast a vote on the 21st century GI Bill.

This is just all getting so surreal.

Then, when I read today about active duty military being stationed at the ready stateside, I begin to wonder where it will all end...and when martial law will be declared. During the election when Bush's court can hand it to McCain? ... or after Obama wins and the scary people don't want to accept it?

They've all gone so whacky that I am almost ready to believe anything. And apparently they think I'm dumb enough. But good grief...could McCain be any more obvious? Really.

is articulate, personable and informed. Despite a couple of unfortunate, misread toss-offs during his career...he has plenty of ammunition and the intelligence to use it to bring the Democratic message home in the debate.

Sarah Palin hasn't been bushwacked by Katie or anyone else. She has been lobbed very basic softballs and she couldn't answer coherently something as simple as "what do you read". It's clear she doesn't. What she is good at is sneering and sniping like McCain and Bush. Only at an enhanced level. (go ahead and read bitch, here) It may work at her own rallies, and as repeated media sound bite quips. But she will look inadequate, desperate and petty on Thursday. It won't fly in the debate.

And no matter how much coaching she's been getting, nothing short of a brain transplant or vulcan mind meld will help her.

Go Joe!!

Or whoever you are.

I would like to respond to your several posts consisting of petty "na na na" troll talking points, but your brand of infantile sniping and nonsequiturs is just impossible to come back to.

That's the problem with "but your mother wears army shoes" right-wing dialog. Can't live with it, can intelligently address it.

Sorry.

I meant "can't intelligently address it".

I'm not Palin-challenged just a really bad proofreader.

Thank you for making my point.

I wish I had time to check back on what extraordinarily petty and irrelevant insult you will cough up next...but I have things to do.

And they do say don't feed the trolls. It's true, the more you feed them, the more they upchuck all over intelligent and earnest discourse.

By the way, congratulations on knowing a couple of big words. If I were you I'd head on out to Sedona to help out while there's still time to make a moose's ear into a silk purse. By the way, I am not actually calling Sarah Palin a real literal moose's ear. And I certainly didn't want to reference "sows ear into a slik purse"; we know how any pig references go over with the right that has apparently no experience with old and accepted colloquial analogies.