For those of us who have struggled to get into a top university and struggled thereafter to get honors and secure a job -- any job -- any dreg job, Sarah Palin is a disgrace. I'm so angry at seeing her callous manipulative flirtatious style full of gee whizzes and you betchas and winking at the camera. I am ashamed and angry that she is a woman -- the GOP VP pick. Awful. Migdia Chinea

Dear Joe,

I cannot believe how you turned yourself into a pretzel to villify the GOP and in particular Gov. Palin, in order to defend your wonderful VEEP, Joe Biden.

Joe, have you really looked at Gov. Palin's record in Alaska? Good Lord, she has had more experience governing in her few years in Alaska than Obama and Biden have combined. What is a mystery to me is why the MSM is so afraid of this little hockey mom from Alaska. If she is so "empty" why all of the press? You are obsessed with her.

The mainstream media has died. RIP.

Karmel

stuartbrown has it right (look under the skirt). From personal observation, with Reagan and G. W. Bush, I have watched the GOP take an attractive governor and groom him for the presidency. They even tried to groom Schwarzenegger, but the Constitution got in the way. This is the real back-room politics. I think the back room is the annual Bohemian Grove conference.

Watching that debacle. It was an insult to Joe Biden that he had to go through such a farce. What would William F. Buckley Jr make of all this I wonder.

Biden was the brain surgeon with hundreds of successful operations behind him. Palin was a numbskull with a Brain Surgery for Dummies beside her. First drill into the skull, remove skull flap & start poking around in brain. Try not to do too much damage.

On behalf of the rest of us, out here in the world I'm begging you all please do not elect McCain.

Please do not insult the intelligence of all the rest of us on this planet.

Also - why oh why does anyone think that because Palin is an action woman she's somehow a new/rare/superior/non-egghead type feminist.

Practical competence in the moose gutting area doesn't preclude the possibility of using one's brain.

In Australia we've millions of women who've farmed & survived in some of the toughest terrain on earth. It doesn't mean every brain cell has atrophied.

To be physically capable & fit does not in any way preclude a life of the mind.

Here's the answer to your answer. If we were disgusted with Palin, which would I guess include McCain, then we would have to vote for Obama and Biden. Since Obama attended a racist church with a racist Pastor, and based on his own book he stated "he would stand with Muslim,s", and his total disrespect for our troops in Iraq gives me plenty of reason to like Palin.

Oh, and by the way what are Obama's qualifications, and he's running for President?

It's the Christian Right who that has dumbed down the GOP. A group of people that are under educated and willing to walk lock step are more are easily controlled. The conservative intellectuals need to insist the GOP drop their influence in the party. This will bring back independents and moderates who left the party.

David Brooks appearing on PBS News Hours Friday seemed pretty sure Obama would win. For the first time I heard him criticize McCain for ignoring the conservatives on the coasts and big cities. Conservatives thought McCain would bring the party back, but instead he gave into the fanatics in the party by picking Palin.

I hate to admit this but once upon a time when I was much younger and desperate for a decent paying job, I bullsh!tted my way through a job interview that I KNEW I wasn't fully qualified for. I padded my resume and gave all the right answers to the interviewers questions fully expecting to be called out as unqualified. I came across as confident and experienced when I knew in my heart that I wasn't prepared for the position. This was a simple restaurant mgrs. position I might add. Imagine my surprise when I was actually hired and expected to perform the way I claimed I could!! Needless to say, I couldn't and I was fired for "not meeting company expectations". I'm a lot older now and I now have the experience I claimed I did back then. I also have an inate ability to smell the same BS I tried pulling all those years ago....And boy does something STINK about Palin. Its a smell I remember quite well....Unfortunately, once she's "hired", there won't be that same performance review and it'll be 4yrs before she can be "fired". Imagine the damage that she can do in that time!!!

Sarah Palin put on a good show Thursday night, but is that the point of a debate? The public decided in the polls afterward, that her performance, while entertaining, was, indeed, not enough. Just as they did the week before by calling McCain the winner, commentators, who mostly praised the governor's debate performance, mostly missed the mark (Mr. Conason of Salon excepted, of course).

How can anyone excuse her behavior in that debate? I suppose she did great at: winking, mugging for the camera, throwing incoherent sound bites together, making up new "facts" on the fly with no connection with reality, completely ignoring the questions she was supposed to answer, insulting average people with the "Joe six pack" refrain. Oh sure that was great. The only thing missing was the beauty pageant line "...I'm hoping for world peace."

Perhaps that's why she bombed in the polls with anyone other than hard core conservatives. But even for conservatives, one has to wonder about Sarah Palin's value as a leader.

I appreciated Kathleen Parker's dose of good old fashioned reality ("Palin is in over her head") from last week: "...Doggone It!" That was much better than her effort today in the Washington Post where she went for style over substance. Sometimes its okay to just say that you just don't have the horses to win this race and move on.

Conservatives have to think about the future. Do they really want to go the way of the Whig Party? Do they really want this woman to be the spokesperson for the conservative movement? Becoming the party of the twenty to twenty five percent of Americans who still support the President and hate the rest of the country is a recipe for the marginalization of the GOP and conservatism. That would be even more depressing than losing this election.

Governor Palin is better suited to be one of the talking heads that dominate talk radio and cable TV. She would fit right in with the usual crew who shout it out nightly over the airwaves, with little regard for reality. She's not a serious candidate and did nothing to change that image last Thursday night. If anything she reinforced it.