Everybody is missing the point. The lies can be refuted. The sort-of lies can be challenged. None of it amounts to a hill of beans because the people who need to know about this, never will.

For one thing, they don't read Salon or any newspaper. Second, they don't care about inconsistencies. When has it been true that the GOP etal. have a problem with hypocrisy, lying, cover-ups, immorality, murder, war, secrecy -- I could go on.

It is NOT A PROBLEM for them. Here the articles and editorials are all for the readers, most of whom are already savvy enough to have figured Palin out without all the niggling facts.

So the big question is, What To Do?

Someone already posted this idea (sorry not be able to attribute it properly), which is to stop being distracted, being caught up in the sideshow, and for Obama to go to his strength, which to be inspiring. Be a star, be a celebrity - it doesn’t matter what they say. The public loves a star, loves celebrities.

It may seem to Obama's campaign to be beneath their admirably high-toned campaign and essential values, but they also need to reach the people who need them the most: the ones who don't get it, who aren't well educated, who get trapped by nasty words more than logic.

Time to roll out the orator again, and make no mention of Palin, but appeal as in the past to people's hopes and aspirations. It doesn't matter if people call it vapor, or empty. We know Obama has lots of substance to go with his profound intelligence and tempered style.

Time to go above the gutter again. Think about this (and tell Joe Biden, too):

Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.

Why isn't this stuff front-page news?

Maybe the New Yorker could do an artful cover? Palin, smiling broadly, in militia gear, with a wolf pelt as a cloak, one foot on a book (its edges on fire, trying to escape a bonfire of books, emails, and US dollar bills), while a worried polar bear and her cub stand on a rapidly melting iceberg and a huge, half-constructed bridge leads to nowhere halfway across an oil-slicked bay.

Just sayin'.

With the growing information about Palin, how come we have not seen any ads from the dems about her? What is resonating to the voters is the picture that the McCain/Palin camp wants to tell and not these "cracks" the bloggers are finding out. Don't you think, they should be all over these by now. Im so scared that I am seeing the "slow" Kerry style campaining, that obviously did not work and will NEVER work. It is so sad to see such a good and qualified person to lead this great country just loose because of poorly run campaign.The good thing is... there is still time but a very short window of time to punch back.

They're issuing press releases. Namby-pamby press releases.

They're saying things that aren't that special or different from what they've been saying for five months.

What the hell are they doing? Where are our donations going?

Obama's best line so far has been, "They must think you're stupid."

WPRFDYWF?

You have in interesting letters history here at Salon. In fact, if I were clairvoyant, I'd say that your're just another one of those PR hacks that has been infesting Salon's comments pages here like a bad case of crabs.

But I'm not clairvoyant. I do, however, subscribe to the "Walks like a Duck" test. You know the rest.

Have a sunny day!

Factual arguments haven't had ANYTHING to do with Republican presidential victories for as far back (at least) as Nixxxon's "Silent Majority" and "Peace with Honor" days. If factual, rational arguments could carry the day, NONE of the Republican presidential campaigns since 1968 would have been successful and the party would have been reduced to their core constituency of mouth breathing snake handlers and geriatric John Birch society members.

Salon cites The National Enquirer and considers Charles Gibson to be a journalist.

CIA asset much?

You cannot spell asset without . . . oh never mind, it's SALON under Joan Walsh! The VOICE of "liberal" thought!

This woman is so very, very fascinating, and yet some of you want to hear less of her and more of the issues? Wow. Just wow.

Speaking of "hearing less of": Didn't we once hear lots about "McCain-Bush"? And wasn't Obama way up when that was the story?

So, I'm thinking that Salon really wants Governor Superstar and her dad to win--that way it'll have the next four years pre-written for it.

No, not really, but that is how many people seem to think it works.

Here's the thing, McCain's echo chamber will keep out facts they don't like, just like Obama's will.

Neither chamber however is the majority. Those outside the chamber are who decide elections. They are not stupid, they are not easily lead.

The listen and see what sounds more like the truth since they know very little truth will ever reach them directly.

In the end, ever story about Palin's falures that goes out online, or gets mentioned in the papers, carries with it McCain's undoing.

McCain's campaign will likely come unraveled in the debates, when he can nolonger stand inside the echochamber, when he has to answer questions.

Obama could stumble there as well, except thanks in large part to the fractrious primary battle, he's only recently gotten to spend time in the echo chamber.

McCain's unearned win (by any democratic standard Romney should be the nominee) his lack of solutions, and his general unlikabilty once people get to know him will eventually destroy his campaign.

Like Bob Dole he will be a generally respected politician that no one wants to be president.

Salon sure did do something about Obama.

Salon slammed him, "concern trolled" him ad nauseum, and helped contribute to the public and media's mass hallucinatory acceptance of the fiction that "criticism of a woman politician = sexism."