Amanda, you noted that "The distance of time between discovering you're pregnant and aborting is brief, especially early on. A week, maybe."

But did you notice that her first blog entry was dated August 20, and the latest is dated August 24? It hasn't been a week yet.

The other question is whether people at Salon know more about this woman than is contained in her blog. It takes time for some random blog to be noticed, given that there are millions of blogs. There might be people out there who can vouch for her, as there were with Iraqi bloggers Raed and Riverbend.

Some historically disempowered group that the Democrats rely on had to lose this time: either the woman would lose or the African-American candidate would lose. The race was close. For some reason, the Salon staff, mostly Clinton supporters, hasn't let it go, and they're making it about sexism, as if the only difference between the two candidates were their gender and race. Thus we're seeing an inordinate amount of attention paid to a tiny number of PUMAs.

By all means, fight for more women in high office, but you might want to notice that our legislatures, Congress, and governors' mansions have a pathetically low number of women compared to Europe or even Asia. When we get to the point where there are dozens of high-powered female governors and senators, we'll frequently see female presidents, and these will be women who made their own careers, instead of taking the family-dynasty route to power.

Whenever a pundit says that we need to "live in the real world", he or she doesn't refer to any objective part of reality, but rather to the atmosphere of media spin that was largely created by Republicans, or by bloviating pundits with time to kill or column inches to fill.

There's nothing "real world" about this peculiar concern about the Greek columns. If Obama delivers his usual excellent speech, no one will pay any attention to the columns in the background.

You begin this article with

"There are almost certainly still some people out there who are upset by how the roll-call vote here at the Democratic Convention was conducted."

Yeah, right. And I'm sure that Fox News will track down every one of them. But please, give it a rest. There are also plenty of people upset over all kinds of much more important things, like whether the Democratic Party platform is progressive enough, who think that congressional Democrats haven't done enough to win the war, who think that the party's commitment to universal health care is too weak, etc.

But by paying no attention to any criticisms coming from the left, and only echoing themes put out by McCain's camp (which is trying their hardest to stir up bitterness between former Clinton supporters and Obama), you remain a passive participant in the cable TV news spin cycle.

Aaron,

See http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12987.html for the $20 million debt she ran up, for a town of only 6,000 people.

... but isn't the real problem that Japan doesn't have no-fault divorce, so that if a spouse wants out of a marriage she (or he) has to show cause to get the divorce granted?

Democrats always want to win by being nice, doing their homework, and having the best stands on the issues. Unfortunately, that's not enough.

A supporter of Adlai Stevenson once called out, "Governor Stevenson, all thinking people are for you!" And Stevenson answered, "That's not enough. I need a majority."

I think Obama's right to stay classy, but that doesn't mean the rest of us have to. Someone has to take the attack to the other side.

... so wake me up when the number of liberals with their own shows remotely approaches the number of conservatives.

... and it certainly doesn't show up in her the way it often does in males.

I echo what Leeandra Nolting said, by the way; please post transcripts.

It's an important-enough topic to deserve some actual prose, with actual discussion.

Anyone out there who has a Yahoo email account should check the security questions they've set, and figure out whether someone who knows you can steal your account. Evidently Palin's security questions (the ones Yahoo asks you if you claim to be the account owner but have forgotten your password) were her birth date, zip code, and where she met her husband (Wasila High School). The "hacker" would also need the actual e-mail address, but that suffices to steal the account. No specialized computer knowledge was needed, just a bit of research with Google.

Then there are the banks that think your mother's maiden name is a secure password.

In the version I saw, Ms. Galore threw Bond around a bit with some karate moves, but then Bond got the upper hand, wrestled her to the ground, and apparently had his way with her despite her attempts to resist.

... it appears that the American people hate this proposal, and if you tell them that McCain blew it up, they will cheer him on, even if he and his way of thinking was largely responsible for the crisis in the first place.

The best thing that can happen is for this thing to fall through, for maybe $100 billion to be made available to hold things together for a few months, and for the next administration and Congress to fix it.

Congressional Democrats are notorious for giving too much away, and too many of them are too close to the banks. If they have to cave, let them cave to President Obama.