This is a country that elected Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush president, twice each. Nuff said on the proof of stupidity.

The serious questions are whether it is any worse now than before and any worse here than in other places. I suspect the answer to both questions is "no". I think there are real limits on human intelligence that leave at least half the population (maybe two thirds) simply unable to understand abstract concepts. Things appear to be getting worse because the stuff we have to deal with is getting more abstract and complex.

In college, I remember a text from ancient Egypt (c. 1500 BC) that was best translated, "the kids today are no damn good". It turned out the reason they were no damn good is that "now that we can write, nobody can remember anything." (these are not exact quotes, but close).

Fundamentalism (and it has always been around in some form--Jesus was preaching against it) is the response of stupid people to complex issues. We'll always have fundamentalists because most people will always need simple, concrete, rules they can use to run their lives. It's the best they can do.

Ignorance is a fixable form of stupidity. Given that our education system stinks for most kids (good education is available anywhere for enough money and in some public school systems), we could improve things for some people. There is no sign anyone intends to, and it does appear that the average student is getting more ignorant compared to the high point of education that may have occurred in the 1960s or '70s. Bright kids who do have access to good education are way ahead of kids in previous generations in math and science, but maybe not in general knowledge.

The Republican Party is an economic class based party that represents one percent, more or less, of the American people. They win elections by scamming stupid people with non issues like abortion and immigrant bashing. Anyone who is not seriously rich who votes for a Republican is stupid.

During the height of the war in Vietnam, Viet Cong body counts were being published regularly as were figures on expenditures. I calculated a statistic I called the milligook. It was the cost of killing one thousandth of a Viet Cong. I was at Johns Hopkins at the time and calculated that you could run the University for a year for three milligooks.

As we now know, the true costs of that war were also seriously underestimated, and we are still paying.

The Clintons--both of them--come as close as two people logically can to having been proven innocent. Conason correctly reviews the record.

The sad fact is, however, that the after effects of decades of unsubstantiated accusations linger on. The ill informed and intellectual lazy--and that includes a large percentage of the American voting public--will always suspect that there must be something there.

I doubt Hillary will ever become president--though I think she might be a good one--because of the poison cloud around her.

It's not canarys; it's chickens coming home to roost. This disaster has been in the making since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. The Republican Party convinced the majority of American voters that 1)rich people did not need to pay taxes and 2)the markets would regulate business. Neither is true.

Each generation of Republican dominance results in reduced taxes on wealth, a concentration of capital in a very few hands and a business climate that invites unscrupulous investors to game the system. We have had watered stock, trusts, holding companies, S&L scams and pyramid schemes in the past; today we have hedge funds, sub prime mortgages and private equity buy outs. The causes and effects are substantially the same.

I suspect the only thing that has been keeping us out of a severe recession (depression?) for several years now is the huge federal deficit.

All political theory and ideology is BS. All that matters is who pays and who profits. The Republican Party is, and has always been, the party that represents rich people and business interests (like the Whigs and Federalists before them). Their base is people who are too dumb to grasp the basic facts. There are not nearly enough people who actually profit from Republican policies to win any election.

The Republican Party is beginning to implode because life has gotten bad enough for enough Americans that even the dumb people are starting to smell the rat. But don't count on them not being able to screw themselves again. (E.g. people who say that if their favorite Democrat does not get the nomination, they will stay home or vote for McCain. Just dumb.)

My reading of the current Democratic standings is that it is virtual tie, with the momentum belonging to Clinton at the moment. I do not see Obama as inevitable.

The left wing of the Democratic Party has never elected a president. The Clintons are centerist Democrats and that's the kind that can actually win elections; Obama has the Stevenson wing sewed up, and they lose. As several writers have noted, he's also starting to wear a little thin.

I mainly want to see a Democrat elected. The press made this a two person "historic" race before the first vote was cast, and no white male had a chance. We may well be stuck with two unelectable Democrats in a year where about 70% of the voters would vote for a generic Democrat.

I'll put my money on Clinton as the better choice for the election. I'd actually prefer to see her as president because I think she's meaner; I'm looking for someone who will try to get revenge for what has been done to the country since 1980, and she has a lot to be furious about.