If liberals had no shame:

Q: "Mr. Steele, if President Obama stands with you on this Bill of Rights, will you promise to stop beating your wife?"

A: "But I don't beat my wife."

Headline: "Steele Refuses to Promise to Stop Beating Wife"

The problem we on the left have is that we at least TRY to exhibit a bit of intellectual honesty and decency (I'll confess we do not always succeed, sadly.) and believe that complicated issues deserve complicated and thoughtful treatment instead of over-simplification and sloganeering.

More importantly, why does Cheney keep calling our soldiers and intelligence agents cowards? I've asked this question over at Open:

http://open.salon.com/blog/tim_howe_1/2009/09/01/cheney_calls_cia_military_intelligence_cowards

If there's a double standard, it's one created by the Palins, who hold themselves out as representing all that is pure & wholesome in the 'real' America.

But for that, any 'uproar' over Bristol's actions - wholesome or otherwise - would be diminished.

Levi, on the other hand, has never held himself out as much more than a redneck jock. Sarah Palin handed him the golden ticket (and continued to add value every time she reacted to anything he said or did) and he's simply cashing in while he can.

My feeling is that any backlash against Bristol is rooted more as a reaction to a perceived hipocracy than gender bias (though I wouldn't pretend gender had nothing to do with it).

This is why the right keeps spiraling deeper and deeper into crazy-town.

They refuse to listen to anything that disturbs their world-view. They won't watch CNN. They won't read the NYT. They won't listen to NPR. They won't read the email you send them pointing out the multiple documented factual errors in their latest spam screed. They get all their "news" from Fox and email alerts from AEI or WND or Sarah's facebook page and trust nothing else.

And now they won't even let their kids hear the president speak. Because of course merely hearing his voice will turn them in to nigger-loving homos who hate America.

These people cannot even be reached, let alone reasoned with.

Response time to these types of things used to be dictated by something called the Fairness Doctrine. The GOP of course killed the Fairness Doctrine, and even though there is no support among Democrats to bring it back, the GOP continues to trot out "rumors" of such an effort from time to time to gin up the base and raise money.

Clearly, we have yet another example of the hipocrasy of the American Right. Add "fairness" to the list of things that are only good when they benefit the GOP.

A draq queen, a madame and a john walk into a polling place . . .

Don't know about Steve47, but I often read Salon on the train using my Palm Pre, and the narrower column will might allow me to more easily do that without either going blind from squinting or constantly shifting the page over. If I understand correctly about the change, I'll be happy as a clam!

(PS: If you don't like the ads, buck up for Salon premium.)

It amazes me sometimes to consider that we readily hop into cars zooming side-by-side just a foot or two apart, at ridiculous speeds, without a single thought as to the competency or intent of the hundreds of drivers next to us, or coming at us. Add to that the fact that so many folks will do so even after consuming several cocktails.

But those same folks will just as readily insist that we HAVE TO TAKE EVERY POSSIBLE PRECAUTION, no matter how much impracticality or inconvience is involved, when it comes to air travel.

There is a cognitive dissonance here that boggles the mind.

And it seems to me that the same folks that don't want the government involved in health care, who believe that government is good for nothing, are so often among the most vocal in insisting that we do as we're told, like good little sheep, the minute we get to the airport.

I suspect, however, that common sense and realism will never carry the day, despite the good and noble efforts of Mr. Smith.

I think the low numbers on whether the plan will affect them is based on the fact that most people have not had to deal with the type of serious medical conditions that most often result in getting jammed up by an insurance company.

They may have heard -- and even believe -- the horror stories told by others in that situation. But nobody wants to believe that they'll ever be stricken by something that puts you into a long-term disability situation, the type of thing that most often results in getting abused by the insurance industry. So their experience with health insurance is mostly either neutral or positive. They get a check-up, they might be on one or two common medications, they pay the co-pay they expect and things generally run smoothly. And all the while, for this minimal benefit, the insurance company is collecting thousands of dollars a year. But when they really need the insurance, that's when the insurance company get's balky.