Read Morris and McCann's excellent post on NewsMax. The entire point of Bill Clinton's efforts in SC is obviously to racialize the campaign. His administration was great for minorities, and yet it looks like black folks will vote en bloc for Obama. Why? Because of skin color, of course. The bigger the coming SC landslide for Obama, and the more racially polarized the vote there, the more it will make Obama look like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. White voters will start to shy away. And if Bill can do it in February, you can bet the Swift-Boaters will do it in November.

Up there in the Peoples' Republic of Cambridge it may make sense to call for a Progressive president, but back here on Planet Earth, among the graying baby-boomers, the choices are:

1. Moderate, or

2. Conservative/Fascist.

If people were going to all stand up for peace and social justice, how did we end up with our current Fascist dictatorship? Obama has about zero chance against the Republican smear machine; and, if by some strange miracle he did become president in 2009, he would have similarly little chance of standing up to the Vladimir Putins of the world.

I'm on exactly the opposite tack from Ms Traister's post. I'm a Hillary supporter, but I hate to think we would suddenly rally around her only because she teared up. For goodness sake, elect a person because you think she will be the best leader for the future of America, not because you're annoyed about the bad boys picking on her. This is what Glenn Greenwald is saying: it's all part of the media's cheapening of American politics and our public discourse.

You wasted your vote.

Here's how it works in a representative democracy: You vote for the candidate/party of your choice, and to the extent your candidate/party is chosen by other voters, you gain representation in government.

Here's how it works in the two-party system: You vote for the candidate/party of your choice, and if less than fifty percent of other voters agree with you (or if the Supreme Court steps in), then you get bupkes.

Let me try again:

1. Two-party system.

2. Dividing the vote on one side automatically hands the election to the other side.

I know that's basic arithmatic, and you and Ralph are out there doing Higher Math, but back here on Planet Earth, that's the way our electoral system operates. Changing it would be worthwhile. Ignoring it is why we have W, the Worst ever.

Ralph Nader, the dimwit who gave us George W Bush. Why anyone would listen to the first word out of his mouth is completely beyond me. Had Nader even two neurons in his head, he would understand that the kind of reform he favors can't be accomplished under the two-party system. Dividing the vote on one side automatically hands the election to the other side.

Earth to Ralph: the two-party system is a very limited form of representative democracy, and that in itself would have been a worthwhile issue for you to work on. Instead, you screwed things up for everybody that isn't a board member at Exxon/Mobil, and you accomplished nothing.

On the one hand, yes, Iran is motivated by self-interest, and there should be room to talk, if we had leadership that was the least bit intelligent.

On the other hand, it strikes me as daft to assume that Iran suspended its weaponization efforts four years ago because of "international pressure". Why on earth would they have done that, but not found a way to let anyone know about it, so the sanctions could be relaxed? Almost certainly, they stopped because their enrichment program hit a snag. Now they reap a serendipitous PR benefit.

Either way, we are blessed with this (probably momentary) opportunity to avoid letting nukes get in the hands of terrorists. However, Salon (as well as the mainstream media) seem to be saying, "never mind, problem solved, it was just another Bushie fabrication all along, go back to sleep".

It shouldn't be a surprise that Microsoft is willing to commit immense resources to making a product not work. You may recall ten years ago, when the monopoly trial was cranking up, that the primary purpose of hundreds or thousands of programmers in Redmond was to try to make it impossible for Windows to run without Internet Explorer, which until that time had been strictly a separate application. That whole fiasco was to provide cover for the M$ lawyers' claim that any application space they felt like monopolizing was an integral part of the OS.

And why didn't anyone ask Rudy what style of necklace HE prefers?

While I find the Democrats' capitulation on waterboarding distasteful, that's only a sideshow. It's another bill to be passed and vetoed, and then the stench will hang even thicker on our malodorous president. Torture is the issue that got the ink at the confirmation hearings, but it's just a distraction.

The real reason Mukasey is unacceptable is that he is willing to put the presidency above the law. The Framers were quite clear that this was never to happen, and for very good reason. The Republican Party should be renamed the Autocratic Party, and people who describe themselves as conservatives should begin to call themselves "expedients" instead. The ends justify the means, in the Age Of Terror.

Dick Cheney obviously has no concept of the meaning of the words "conservative" or "republican".

Clearly, Hughes didn't organize enough happy-talk fake news conferences to get the job done. Happily, that guy Philbin from FEMA is now available....

What bad luck for this guy Philbin: he screwed up badly enough to get fired, but not badly enough to receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Careful, Glenn, I figure parsing horseflop from the keyboard of a political-echelon colonel is grounds these days for an invitation to a chicken-wire suite at Gitmo.