Mr. President, we have word that there are 30 mothers in early stage of pregnancy who are going to willingly donate their children to the terrorist cause and enroll them in a radical madrassas. We have a chance to abort these babies. These children will not grow up to be "innocent bystanders", but in fact will be insurgent fighters, suicide bombers. Mr. President, will you sign off?

Oh yes, and while you are thinking about that, we have the daily list of deadly air strikes, if you can just quickly put the old John Hancock on the dotted line...

One of the biggest problems is the lack of international news, you only here about other countries in the US when there is something ultra sensational, i.e.:

1. the US is bombing those countries

2. there was a natural disaster

3. there was a terrorist event

The result of the above is:

1. The US is dominant over those badly behaving countries

2. we get to see how poor the infrastructure is 'over there'

3. The terrorist threat is alive and well.

You never hear about how other countries are dealing with day to day issues. When I was living in the US I would go back to Canada and be startled that the news on CBC would cover international stories at length, in detail, and in a non-sensational manner.

Another set of messages would change things considerably:

1. People all over the world have many of the same concerns.

2. The vast majority of the world's population are "moderate" and not "extremist"

3. The United States ranks poorly relative to the rest of the world in many areas, for example: health care, education, freedom of the press, development of new environmental technologies, obesity, democracy, quality of airlines, quality of airports, disaster response, mass transit, gap between rich and poor, gun violence. In many of these areas, it ranks behind many poor, developing countries. Yet it has the highest GDP. Sustaining the myth of the "greatest country on earth" doesn't fix these problems. "Love it or leave it" does not fix these problems.

4. The United States can learn things from other countries, adopting ideas that work well in other countries.

These simple lessons that will prevent an almost certain implosion of the US in the coming years.

So now we know Bush doesn't lie "per se", he is just being dismissive.

And, oh yes, the fact that you read means you are "literate". It does not mean you are "intelligent". Intelligence could have been demonstrated by the following:

1. A great decision that the president made that has worked out really well during his seven years in office.

2. Something really intelligent and insightful that he said during the course of interviews, or during his time in office.

3. A demonstration that he has understood the history books he has read (more than a "this good" and "that other thing--bad! kind of understanding)

This wasn't offered to me so I have to conclude that Bush is merely an incredibly well connected man of moderate intelligence with fairly good people skills. Maybe I'd hire him to work at a Best Buy. However, I think the bar for president should be set just a wee bit higher than that.

Wow, what a wingnut spiritual philosophy espoused by Kucinich! He would have stood a better chance in Cleveland by sticking to the more sober philosophy--magic man in the sky creates planet in 7 days, creates a man and a woman, their children have lots of incestuous sex and do lots of begatting, magic man sends his walking-on-water, leper curing, turning water-into-wine son to earth by virgin birth, who then is killed and comes back to life. Now that's normal!

Kucinich's new-agey stuff only got him elected to Congress.

"But if there's going to be a conflict, science changes with every generation and with new discoveries and God doesn't. So I'll stick with God if the two are in conflict."

Maybe this is obvious to most people here, but since it isn't to him, science changing with new discoveries is a good thing, and means it is filling in more and more pieces of the puzzle. A belief that was hatched, during a time when people thought the earth was flat, to explain the sun, the moon, earthquakes, floods etc., and that doesn't change to take into account new discoveries, and it merely used to suppress people because it inherently doesn't invite debate....

Ah, what's the use, I might as well be arguing that the sky is blue.

Here is my dumb question:

When I was traveling in Peru I went around the country mostly by bus. The movie showing on all the 4 buses (and different bus companies were involved) were airplane disaster movies. One was "Alive", one was some really bad movie set in Alaska with Charlton Heston, and the other one I forget. So, is there a conspiracy amongst Peruvian bus companies to show movies like these to discourage people from flying?