LF : PBS just finished a discussion of the difference in perspective between young women and middle aged woman. There is an obvious reason for this difference. Older woman pushed that glass ceiling up so that today's woman can enjoy professional jobs that were not possible 40 years ago. I am not a Clinton devotee and I will put my support behind Obama/Biden. Just as the working class struggled to become middle class, women struggled to move up to professional positions. As our place in the middle class becomes jepordized so is a women's role in the workplace. Progress for women was hard won and the younger generation should treasure it carefully. Maternity leave? My boss called me back to work one week after I had my daughter to do a speech. Guess what...I showed up and I did it so that today's woman can take maternity leave. Let's stick together and get out of this mess.

Rebecca Mortenson : About Barac Obama, How would he help a person like myself who was disabled since birth and now with a nerve stimulator I am no longer a slow learner, don't have a hand shakiness problem, have an associate degree, drive, cured of epilepsy and more? Having known what I had gone thru in life and what others are going thru also I want to help counsel other under-priviledged individuals to feel they can make it through life just like I had done. How can he get me 40+ years of experience to count as education to be a counselor to help the under-priviledged? The furthest I got educated was an associate. I was taken off of disability in 02/07 and still haven't had luck in finding employment at 55. I want to work for the rest of my life with the many talents I had developed while on disability for neurological past problems since birth. So how can he help a person like myself? That is one thing I want to base my vote on.

Ron Cowin : I think it is quite ironic that one of the big sponsors on liberal talk radio is a company that sells gold coins.

PhiipTuret : Reclaim the legacy of William Jennings Bryan Progressives must reclaim the legacy of William Jennings Bryan, an original prairie populist and an example of what�s not the matter with Nebraska (in this case). He would be embraced as the intellectual great-grandfather of the progressive movement but for the �Inherit the Wind� caricature of Bryan that we�ve grown up with. Yes, we know what side he was on in the Scopes trial, but Bryan�s objection to evolution wasn�t scientific (no science was allowed at the trial) but to the social Darwinism that was all the rage in the 1920�s. He was thinking about Nietzsche rather than Darwin (Michael Kazin: A Godly Hero). It is understandable that a lot of us feel defensive about the teaching of science in the schools, and are ready to demonize Bryan since that�s been the popular view since Darrow and H. L. Mencken. You might even trace the ascendance of the neo-liberal (read conservative) press to Mencken and the New York Times of the 1920�s. But scientific Darwinian theory is in no danger in the academy, at least until the anti-science defunding tide reaches them; it is we who are in danger of becoming more and more isolated in the world as we spend endless hours parsing the mind-numbing debates over creationism and �intelligent design�. The modern values debate of the Phyllis Schlaffley/Pat Robertson variety is firmly in the thrall of free market ideology. The other day on C-Span/BookTV there was a talk by Benjamin Wiker (10 Books that Screwed Up the World), who, along with Phyllis Schlaffley and �that hairdo�, dragged out the usual suspects: Marx, Hobbes. If I had been in the audience I would have offered one more suggestion: an atheist Russian immigrant with a profoundly anti-family, amoral agenda which unfortunately has become ascendant, to the point that it has become part of the air we breathe. Her ideological descendants run from Barry Goldwater to Ronald Reagan to Alan Greenspan to Bill Clinton. Of course you guessed � it�s � [wait for it] Ayn Rand. Bryan reanimated, after marveling at the progress in technology and lifespan in the world, would despair of the state of affairs and the distance we are from his Christian socialist ideals (cf. E. Bellamy), that religion has been co-opted to the forces of the market, at the disparity of incomes, at the masses of uninsured. And he would find the immorality of the social Darwinism of the market a shame on all of us. And then he would say: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold Philip Turet Norfolk, VA