Obama delivers that beautiful speech last night, and from you today, nothing.

Oh, wait. Not nothing. We do get two posts in which you seem to be announcing your intention to equate any objections Sarah Palin to blatant sexism.

Really, I can't go down that road again. I almost cancelled my subscription before, but I held on anyway, hoping that Salon would eventually get back to the business of defeating McCain and TURNING THIS COUNTRY AROUND!

But now, I can see that is just not going to happen. Hillary Clinton worked her ass off to take her campaign as far as it went. She created a platform, worked out plans answering several of the problems facing the country, had to raise money and take all the punches and return punches inherent in a political campaign, and in myriad other ways prove why she was worthy to be the leader of the country.

I wonder why she bothered. Hey, you want to be president? Well work really hard, campaign tirelessly, and put in the good fight and if the voters agree with you, you'll get to be president. Sure, you could do that, if you're a masochistic moron.

OR you could just sit it out in Alaska, kill a few moose, and wait for that out of the blue phone call from a desperate white male hoping to use you as a wedge to peel off votes from his opponent; not because he really believes you are the best choice, but because he really is that desperate to win, and the strategy of using you like this is the only hope he has left.

And now, instantaneously, without her doing a shred of work, it seems I'm to be expected to view her as no less viable a presidential contender as Hillary or Obama, who have spent 18 months and more in their pursuit of the office. Failure to do so can only be attributable to sexism, it seems.

Well I say to you, no. I'm just not going to play that game again. It's exhausting. The notion of Palin as a viable candidate is laughable from the onset. I don't feel obligated to give it even the slightest bit of further consideration. If your support of Hillary was really about her ideas and policies and not her gender, then you wouldn't have any trouble seeing McCain's cynical ploy for the insulting gamble it is either.

Joan, I see that between the time I was writing and posting my comments below, you have finally addressed Obama's speech. Thank you. I'll check that blog out more.

But I repeat, I feel absolutely zero obligation to take the Palin nomination seriously. We must destroy the Republican agenda utterly and completely and mercilessly or lose our country, if there's even still time to save it. I'm not convinced that there is. The stakes are too high; I honestly can't stand it if we're expected to constantly be on the lookout for signs of sexism in a debate that shouldn't even be taking place.

So I'll state in advance, she lost my vote at "creationism." That's just the first of many places where she would lose my vote. We've already tried the dirt dumb ignorant route. It's a dead end. Nothing to see when you get there. Please, let's not create this false parity just because she's a female.

I wish this had trumped the urge to play into McCain's distraction gambit, but it's nice to finally read that you did find some of Obama's speech inspirational.

At least McCain's distraction wasn't as thoroughly disgusting as the distraction the repubs pulled four years ago, when they cooked up the big orange alert terrorist emergency the day after the convention.

Go Obama, and in accordance with Joan's post, please feel free to take the kid gloves off even more. You have truth on your side! Be bold and uncompromising!

About leaving this as a family issue, and I agree with that for the most part.

However, in a couple of days these asshats are going to hold a convention, and we are all going to have to listen to speech after speech in which an implicit or explicit theme will be the moral failings of liberals and the superior "values" of republicans.

We will have these fingers pointed at us in spite of stories like this, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. I am sick of the hypocrisy. Sorry, no. You don't get to have an unmarried teenage daughter having a baby in the family, AND get to point fingers at the supposed failings of other people.

Some letter writers here would have us back off the young girl, which is fine. But when mom gets on the stage and starts with the blather, you bet I'm going to feel full entitlement to heckle her with any means at my disposal. It seems some letter writers would even take this off the table.

Everyone with half a brain already knows that Fox Noise is crap, and that O'Reilly is a pompous asshole. (He is the first face that comes to mind when I hear George Carlin's routine "That guy's not stupid, he's full of shit!)

Obama can go on the show and score a million points off O'Reilly and he'd still not likely sway any of the zombie crowd tuned in solely to practice their two minutes of hate. At best, they might grudgingly admit that Obama is one slick black guy -- gotta watch those slick black guys, they're even worse than the other kind of black guys. (Boy, you got that right, Merl. Them slick one's the worst, but ain't he good at spreading it? No wonder all them college educated liberals who think they know stuff just because they studied are falling for it. Got get 'em, Bill!)

But going on Fox will be symbolic, I guess, of something. At the very least it takes away O'Reilly saying shit like Obama's afraid of real journalists like me.