Bill Clinton has a chance to redeem himself and pass the torch (delayed eight years) to Obama blazing. He has a chance to undo the damage he did to himself and to race relations and to the Democratic party by making a speech that makes Obama look like God's gift to the nation which, in this year of McCain he truly is. He has a chance, as a former POTUS, to attack the present and retiring POTUS as nobody else can. He can do to Bush what Obama can't. He knows the job. He left the country's economy in decent shape. He had good people in difference offices. The convention literally has to boil Bush in oil and Clinton can do it.

I am not going to watch all Olympics all the time. I tuned in the ceremony at the point where the Chinese athletes entered the stadium, sparing myself all the beautiful and creative massed performers and in time to watch the strange vision of the guy in the harness circling the stadium en route to lightinig the caldron (bizarre).

I think attention should be paid to athletes from other countries, cut the sappy biographical clips and give the world more actual competition. I don't want to get "up close and personal" with a javelin thrower or a shot putter. I want to see him or her compete agaisnt other javelin throwers or shot putters. More track and field.

We are going to have this with us for two weeks before an equally ornate and costly closing ceremony. How many Darfuris could China have fed with the estimated hudred million that the opening ceremony cost? What a sad waste of time, money and effort.

Israel needs this like a hole in the head. I think we need to keep our so-called Christian Zionists, for whom Jews are tools to be discarded "when" Jesus returns, here on our shores under lock and key.

The Clintons were shown to be a class act and I am very relieved that they did so. I would love to see Bill and Hillary out there on the road for Obama, giving him the same support as they did at the Convention.

Hillary can take on a role in the Senate that will cement her reputation for all time just as Ted Kennedy did and help Obama pass universal health care. If she wholeheartedly helps him get elected, she can write her own ticket.

McCain is 72. He has had multiple recurrences of an aggressive cancer. This lightweight was cynically tapped because she is a woman.. Her husband is an oilman, she is anti-choice and this is one aneurysm away from the White House?

Someone elsewhere asked why he passed over Britney Spears.

When I saw that, I almost fell off the couch. Lime green was the sickening backdrop to McCain's worst humiliation after Obama clinched the Democratic nomination. People were hooting and hollering about it right and left. I was thinking, is the convention out of its collective mind????

Then I remembered that they had nominated Palin. Question answered.

I don't know what's more shameful, the author of this article writing them or the campaign enjoying it.

I watched the interview with Katie Courik and I was frightened. She is truly unprepared to take on the job for which she is running. She cannot move beyond what was scripted and fed to her. She reminds me of Lenina Crowne in "Brave New World" whose hypnopedic mind contained nothing but what was fed to her. She cannot conceptualize and, if John McCain were to get sick and be incapacitated, we would have nothing in the White House. The Palin presidency would make George Bush look like a philosopher king.

All the cosmologists, including Stephen Hawking, have said that time travel is not possible given the technology and physics now available. If McCain has made a breakthrough and has been able to find a wormhole in the space-time continuum, he ought to share it with folks like Brian Greene and Michio Kaku. Otherwise, he would do better waiting for the debate to declare that he's won it.

McCain's injecting himself into the bailout negotiations and making a big deal of his involvement reminds me of an incompetent civilian at the site of a major traffic accident who tries to give orders to the EMTs, distracting them from giving CPR to survivors. Instead of staying behind the yellow tape, the idiot does harm.

I think Obama won by virtue of being able to make sense, look presidential (whatever that means) and convincing many that a person of color is not a threat. He was unthreatening to a fault but the general idea was sound. There are still benighted folks out there who are scared generically and the ability to maintain dignity, treat your opponent with courtesy and, at the same time, make some points, may have done a lot more to help him over the next debates. It will also raise expectations, of course, but that's okay. He can meet them.

McCain's contemptuousness did not do him credit. He needs to rein that in and do it quickly. The real problem for McCain, though, is not going to be McCain or Obama. It will be the debacle looming on Thursday when Sarah Palin goes against Joe Biden. While Biden is something of a windbag at times, he is a very intelligent, knowledgeable man with a lot of experience. He also has respect for women so he's not going to condescend to her the way McCain tried to do to Obama. It's going to be ugly and it may well sink any hope McCain has of being POTUS. Who wants to risk him when she is the next in line and he is 72 with a record of an aggressive and recurrent cancer? I don't.