You ask how a human mind can avoid recognizing that it is now saying precisely the opposite of what it has said for the last eight years. There is an answer in today's Salon, as it happens: the article by Burton about fixed opinions and incompetence.

The task ahead for intelligent and competent people (they are not always the same, of course) is to figure out how, without infringing on basic human rights, to keep the boneheaded bozos from positions of power and influence.

Have always despaired of the anti-thought of my country. In this culture, to be intelligent and capable is to be mocked and marginalized, not respected. It isn't just anti-intellectualism. It is the opposition to any intelligence or learning whatsoever.

Stupidity is not a moral failing. Willful ignorance is. It is, in fact, to echo Daffy Duck, despicable.

The real reason McCain is backing out is, as someone in the letters section has pointed out, that McCain knows Obama would wipe the floor with him in any honest debate.

I suspect most voters who do not have totally closed minds will recognize this. The man may have been heroic forty years ago, but he has transformed himself into a toady, liar, and coward.

Sarah Palin may be functionally intelligent, but she is not, as you put it, "perfectly smart." Truly smart people do not base most of their decision-making on fixed ideas. Truly smart people do not ignore reasonable evidence.

This one is going the rounds, based on an old country joke: Sarah Palin is a post turtle.

You know. You're driving down a country road and you see a turtle on a fence post. Right away you know she didn't get up there by herself, she doesn't belong there, she has no idea what to do while she's up there, and you wonder what dumbass put her there in the first place.

I think your idea, mentioned in passing, of giving taxpayers stock in the companies they bail out is brilliant. The stock is probably worthless, but if we are going to jack 700 billion or more into those companies, over 2000 dollars worth per citizen, and surely more like 5000 per taxpayer, shouldn't we get 5000 dollars of stock each?

I'm not so sure limiting CEO compensation going forward will help, though I favor limitations on their ridiculous pay. What about the jerks who engineered this mess? Should they be allowed to walk away with their loot?

Right now, our best hope for justice on this front is an honest FBI investigation (I know, I know, an oxymoron) into what happened, and legal penalties. Anyone found culpable should be fined at least 90 percent of their net worth and the money put into a fund to ease the tax burden on everyone else.

I supported Hillary in the primaries, but think Obama is a fine candidate--just to make my predelictions clear. That said, Obama struck me as articulate, quick-witted, and capable. McCain struck me as a befuddled old man whistling through his false teeth (I'm in my mid-sixties, so let's not talk age-ism here).

One moment I thought was stunningly indicative of the difference, and that no one seems to have mentioned, was when McCain attacked Obama for saying he would "attack" Pakistan, maintaining that a president should know better than to say such things out loud. I thought Obama was masterful in response. First, he exploded the lie, repeating what he had said (which was that he would target Al-Queda in Pakistan, not that he would attack Pakistan). Obama, unlike McCain, can remember what he has already said. Then, referring to McCain's description of presidential tight lips, he said (I don't remember the exact words), "That's pretty hard to swallow coming from a man who threatened Korea and sang a song about bombing Iran." (He might have mentioned McCain's belligerent statements about Russia and Georgia, too.)

Is THAT not a zinger?

My favorite is still the "Palin is a post turtle" joke.

You're driving down a country road. You see a turtle atop a fence post. Right away you know it didn't get up there by itself, it doesn't belong there, it doesn't have any idea what to do while it is up there, and you wonder what dumbass put it there in the first place.

As a Mississippi-born writer (my first novel, Jujitsu for Christ, was set during the civil rights movement of the sixties in that state), I'm getting a little tired of outsiders using Mississippi for "authenticity." Mississippi Burning was dreadful, The Color Purple was pretty obviously not filmed in Mississippi (a black man with a mansion and a fine horse? Well-groomed grassy fields?). The John Grisham thing--A Time to Kill?--was bathetic, melodramatic. At least he's a Mississippian, though.

Shouldn't have to say this, but I found the racism of the sixties horrifying and evil, as I do all racism. Just wish the people who use the state knew something about it.

Don't know what this means, but saw a headline somewhere this ayem, maybe on Yahoo, to this effect: Campaign managers say race hurts Obama.

My first reaction was, Well of course. It would hurt anybody. The presidential race is a bruising contest.

Was well into the article before I realized they were talking about RACE race, the black/white stuff. I am, by the way, a quarter Irish, a quarter Scots, some Brit stuff, and a sixteenth Cherokee, and was raised white in Mississippi.

Makes me feel like the Stephen Colbert character to tell it, but this is a true story.

Hope U.S. voters react the same way.

Now the banks say it is unfair to force them to value their holdings at fair market value. They should be allowed to value them according to what they think they might be someday.

I've got no problem with that assuming those same banks will allow me to value my accounts not according their present market value but according to what I think they might be worth someday.