I must disagree with "Necromancer".

Putting Sharon Stone in the same room with Britney Spears is like putting the USS Enterprise on the same ocean with a speedboat. Yes, I will grant that Britney is hot. But that's about all there is to her. And when she ever let go with that "just trust the President" line, I decided she was just another brainless strip-club wannabe.

Sharon Stone, on the other hand has always had this smoldering intelligence and a kind of indifference to what anyone thought of her. She knows what she brings to the table and has never suffered fools gladly. While Demi Moore seemed to be all about the petulant diva and you could ignore that, you can't safely ignore Sharon Stone. Better bring your A-game when you deal with her. I've known women like that. That kind of intelligence, combined with that smoking hot body is a serious turn-on. She gets abuse for being confident when a man would get kudos. She knows that reality and she doesn't give a right damn. One of these days she will get film roles that let her showcase what she's really about, and I will be glad to watch.

Dear Farhad,

However sincerely held a man's beliefs may be, it does not follow that they translate into policies that are good for the nation. John McCain is not a good choice for president and no one should be decieved into thinking that he is simply because he "sounds honest".

I used to believe that too. I could've voted for a Republican ticket with Colin Powell on it also. Ten years ago, I voted Republican because I believed Bill Weld was an honest man who had brought home the goods for my state of MA. Ten years later, Ed Reform has, in tandem with No Child Left Behind nearly eviscerated education in Massachusetts. The current governor, Mitt Romney has put higher education nearly out of reach for most people here. Major companies as well as several hundred thousand people have left the state, and Mitt Romney is right now collecting chits for a possible run at the White House.

My point is this: Republican ideology has been shown to be a bad thing for the country overall. From Reagan to Bush 1 to the Shrub, bad things happen to this country under Republican leadership. People suffer. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the middle class gets squeezed as wealth gets consolidated in the hands of corporations and the wealthiest few. It's fundamentally unfair leadership. What we're seeing these days is that basically unfair leadership taken to its illogical extreme. A McCain presidency would be no better than any other post-Reagan Republican presidency. Now before you say, "it would be better than Bush", that is also not true since McCain was never much to the left of Bush to begin with. With his recent embrace of the Jerry Falwell-Pat Robertson lunatic crowd, he has joined the mad-dog-foaming-at-the-mouth religious chorus that hates immigrants, gay people, black people, and women. From where I sit, his transformation to the "dark side" is as complete as Anakin Skywalker's transformation into Darth Vader. This can't possibly be good. "Sounding honest" will not do anymore. George W. Bush "sounded" honest and straightforward and a man of his convictions not so long ago. Until he was revealed to be a lying, bullheaded, unprincipled, smirking imbecile in the last year or so. Don't let's be fooled again.

"Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss"

To anyone paying attention to any possible McCain bid for the White House: Sen. John McCain has already sold his soul to that "guy named Satan" by getting in bed with the "Christian Right". Enough handwringing about this! Let's get to work discrediting these Jesus freaks of nature and send them all packing come 2008

Kevin Sweeney is correct when he states that pessimism saps the will to do anything constructive. I expected to find more praise for an article with such a hopeful tone, particularly on a news site that is regularly sounding alarm bells about the world around us. A thoughtful look at what solutions might be is just the breath of fresh air progressive souls need in these times. Instead I find almost universal despair and cynicism throughout the posts I've read here. Have we really got to the place where we are throwing up our hands and saying it's no use? Have the mad dogs on the right bit us that hard? This kind of despair is precisely what these extremists are hoping for. That we'll simply say it's too big and give up and allow them to continue to take from us all that makes us great as a nation in favor of re-implementing the horrors of our Puritan past. A past which really was not kind to anyone in general, women in particular. If we are going to be "progressives" then we need to be about solutions, not just problems. Then we are no more than alarmists. This is part of what is paralyzing the Democratic Party right now. There's plenty not to like about the current administration, but a Democratic one could be far worse if there are no real, actionable solutions, and the communication of an achievable, if challenging vision. We already know what the Republicans are about: individualism at the expense of the whole in the marketplace, and repressive, theocratic (theo-crazy actually), "morality" as social policy with an emphasis on controlling women and sexuality. This is psychotic government. Everyone sees that.

But what are we about? Handwringing? "Sky is falling" rhetoric? Despair?

Isolation in some wilderness, as one poster seems to favor?

Why can we not be about hope? The current administration and the current trends are not hopeful, certainly. Why shouldn't hope be the thing we own as surely as the right "owns" patriotism? And isn't hope more patriotic as a matter of history?