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BILL MOYERS: We always encourage you to share your thoughts with us online and you oblige. Spirited discussions fill our email box and blog pages. So we would like to take this opportunity to share with you some of the comments that recently caught our eye.

Progressives David Sirota and Thomas Frank described how they hoped Barack Obama's White House would handle the economic crisis.

DAVID SIROTA: I'd like to see him pass a much bigger, much more robust economic stimulus package that was focused almost exclusively on spending, on the kinds of public spending, expanding healthcare, infrastructure spending, and back off the idea of corporate tax cuts.

THOMAS FRANK: I would add to that - it's judgment day for Wall Street. We need really strong oversight. Regulation is back.

BILL MOYERS: Here is what some of you had to say.

ERNIE MACMANUS: Enough is enough! Hold the second bailout package. I cannot continue to subsidize anyone doing better than me. It is immoral and unjust for the future of my children, who deserve better. -Ernie MacManus

CS: The issues the Obama Administration is going to have to deal with are the same issues that the last administration dealt with. So far, the change has been symbolic; it will continue to be symbolic because the president has to deal with reality -CS

VARDA BURNS: Unless we can change, Obama will not succeed. The corporate dictatorship that has a firm grip on our spending priorities is still very much in place. - Varda Burns

BILL MOYERS: Historian Simon Schama sparked a vigorous debate over immigration when we aired this excerpt from his documentary series "The American Future".

SIMON SCHAMA: These volunteers gather every week to protect the kind of America they want to live in.

Their targets are the Mexican migrant workers who stand at the roadside waiting to be offered a day's work.

The notion is: there's always the next wave. They're not going to be ready or right or, in some peculiar biological way, compatible with democracy.

SHEILA MIANO: In your interview Simon Schama, you conflated immigration with illegal immigration. Not everyone who wants our borders controlled is a nativist. There are real reasons to want to control our borders. -Sheila Miano

A. FISHER: Those who live near the border with Mexico are NOT opposed to immigration or to Mexicans or others of foreign origin. They are, however, tired of paying for people who drain our communities by breaking the laws of our land to illegally come here and take advantage of our services. - A Fisher

TOSIA NEIGER MCCORMICK: I am an immigrant and a Jew who came here from Germany over 40 years ago. Those of us who came from somewhere else can love this country and see its blemishes and possibilities from the perspective of "somewhere else." -Tosia Neiger McCormick

BILL MOYERS: Sarah Chayes, a journalist and entrepreneur with a grass roots business in Afghanistan told us what she thinks must be done to beat back the resurgence of the Taliban.

SARAH CHAYES: We do need more troops. And let me just remind you that the number of troops on the ground per population is pretty much the lowest of any U.S. post-conflict involvement since World War II. And at this point the Taliban kind of military campaign plan is effective enough that, you know, you do need troops to prevent them from making military encroachments.

CAROL DAVIDEK-WALLER: I strongly disagree with your guest Sarah Chayes that a military solution is what is needed in Afghanistan. The dangers of getting bogged down in another useless war are very real and more soldiers are likely to create more problems than they solve. -Carol Davidek-Waller

KLARK MOUVINON: I don't think Sarah Chayes sees a war, but competing occupations. The Afghan people and their strategic land are a valuable commodity for which outsiders are competing. Even the government the U.S. installed has become an occupying parasite. -Klark Mouvinon

BILL MOYERS: Thanks for the comments. We listen and read them all and are ever grateful that you are watching and listening too. So please keep them coming to our website at PBS.org.

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