sure helps. I know people that rely on Rush for all their information needs. I can tell what he's been saying by what they are saying. Rarely do they research anything independently - intead they repeat what he said.

I figure he's been bloviating about a black man in the White House lately, based on what I've heard from one of his listeners lately. I'm sure just another one of his "jokes".

Haven't read the article (I'm about to - you betcha), but couldn't help notice it's dated Oct. 4 - a tad freakish, for a North American publication. Don't know who Joe Conason is, I'm guessing he's over in Europe, somewhere where it is Oct. 4. Places Palin didn't get to backpack. Right?

except I think conservatives are not disgusted that their party nominated a person devour of qualifications because their party is giving them what they want, which is power, probably, as some letters have suggested, fascist power.

It serves the power behind puppets like George W., John McCain, Sarah Palin and Dan Quayle to have morons before the public, that is why they aren't disgusted. It doesn't really matter what Sarah thinks. Even if, goddess forbid, McCain is elected and then keels over dead, it's not like Sarah Palin is actually going to be a master of the universe. She is only going to do what she is told to do, just like Georgie Porgie has done.

I find myself a little anxious, Joe Conason, that you, a writer whose thinking I respect don't seem to understand why the conservative base is happy with Palin. Palin gives them what they want, that's why they put up with her.

The men behind the Republican puppets are venal men, determined to create the world as they want it to be. They didn't have Halliburton attack the White House and take over the Government because maybe 'the people' would have objected. Instead, they stole elections, they learned how to use the media to manipulate the suckers and idiots who vote against their own middle class interest to protect the elite. . . . they are already in charge. What we have left is token illusions of power vested in the people.

It's really all over. I'm gonna vote for Obama but he seems to be all about preserving the power elite. I hope I am wrong but I don't expect an Obama Administration to bring about much change. Look, we've had a Democratic congress for two years and they keep right on voting for the war even though the people are clearly, unequivocally against it.

It's already fascism, with a veneer of democracy. Our so-called democracy is about as real as the fake powdered cream people put in coffee.

To put it bluntly, there is no outrage, because the GOP has become the party of the stupids.

In Virginia we've seen a transformation over the past 10 years where moderate Republicans -- people who used reason and persuasion to forge legislation -- have left the party.

The same has happened in places like Kansas.

What's left are extreme ideologues and the manipulators at the top. The manipulators know how to package their product, and the base lacks the intellectual skill set to really go beyond the surface level pitch.

Bush Republican conservatives don't care, because they are ignoramuses when it comes to political packaging. They don't know how to look under the hood and kick the tires. They haven't learned about modern political manipulation tricks, so they are easy marks.

If more realized exactly what McCain was saying about them when he selected someone like Palin, they would be outraged. But they're too ignorant to figure it out.

The Republican Party has been crippled by the very base that strengthened it when George W. Bush was elected. Not to get to detailed, but behavior of Bill Clinton while in office allowed the right to milk moral outrage for all it is worth. People tend to forget that Kenneth Starr was a genuine religious fundamentalist (from Lubbock, Texas if I remember correctly).

How many people truly think that after a presidency at a time of general prosperity that was successful in so many ways that Al Gore would not have been more easily elected if Bill Clinton had kept "willie" where it belonged? We have paid and paid and paid for his shallow dalliance. Hillary Clinton has paid for it.

The Republican Party has enjoyed six years of Washington control, with only the last two in which we had a Democratic Congress.

However, much has changed since Bush came to power. He has brought us an irrational war, abuses of our constitution, embarrassment abroad, and now financial ruin. We could get into an argument of first causes but George W. Bush had a lot of help in his election from William Jefferson Clinton.

The religious right was outraged. Right wing talk radio grew. Rush Limbaugh prospered. Fox became the favorite news source for many Americans.

Yet, paradoxically, through all of this, America did not become more religious. Instead, one could easily argue that it has become less religious. Yes, plenty of people still see it as wrong to cheat on one's spouse. Probably even more people see it as wrong to cheat on one's spouse in the oval office. However, the internet age has given us the opportunity to explore many viewpoints, including those that support genentic testing, biomedical research, cloning, and controversies over when life begins and ends.

Things that used to be simple -- life began when a woman found out she was pregnant and ended when that child grew old and stopped breathing -- have become increasingly complex, thanks to science, thanks to the internet, thanks to the flat world.

Now think how scary all this must be for Bible true believers. Not only can we assert that man never walked with dinosaurs, we can prove it with radio carbon dating. Not only can we say that legal life is as courts define it, but we can argue about whether legally protected life can begin with a fetus that does not yet have brain waves or feel pain as a developed child does. No, the world was not only not made in seven days. It wasn't even made in 6,000 years and yes, DNA can prove that we are related to apes. God did not blow air in our nostrils.

For the Bible true believer, the world has turned upside down and they can't put their fingers in their ears and say "Nah, nah, nah" forever.

John McCain's desperate reach for Palin was part a bid for those true believers and an attempt to capture some unhappy Hillary supporters. However if those Hillary supporters were not already moderates rather than liberals and/or feminists, he lost them.

I suppose it is possible for John McCain to still win the election. However, it is not likely. By hitching his star to the Bush legacy and the Bush religionists, he sealed his fate. Those true believers in the midwest and the Bible belt may yet keep John McCain from total humiliation. He will likely win a few states. Go to any electoral map and take a look at the economy and realize how unlikely it now is that he will win the election. Two more debates to go. If Obama doesn't fall on his face, he probably wins. John McCain could probably produce lightening bolts from his fingers and still lose.

I guess he should have run as a moderate. He could probably not have done that in the primary, but he could have moved sharply to the middle and selected an intellectually respectable woman VP. He didn't. He also thought until recently that "the fundamentals of our economny are strong." Wrong again, John.

Part of it is luck and part of it is judgment. Whatever one things of Barack Obama, this year he has had both the luck and the judgment.

In a year like this -- a truly crazy year -- winning probably actually means something. May luck and judgment be with Obama. He will desperately need both, as will the rest of us.