The most interesting question to me is whether or not Lieberman will continue to get campaign money from the Democratic National Committee. I think you could reasonably assume that his DNC funding would have been cut off if he lost the primary and then suddenly decided to run as an independent but now that he's officially announced that he's prepared to jump ship if he loses, shouldn't his money spigot have been turned off the instant he made his announcement? Or am I going about this too logically? Maybe his announcement will result in him getting a crapload of EXTRA money from the DNC, on the theory that the party sure wouldn't want to lose a loyal Bush-huggin' guy like him.

Note to the DNC: From now on every time you ask me for more money I'm going to ask you for a guarantee that not one dime of my contribution will go to support Joe Lieberman's campaign. If he's not good enough for Connecticut Democrats then he's sure as hell not good enough for me!

Well, I'm 58 years old and my inevitable march towards retirement may give me a little more perspective than most but, quite frankly, I can't recall ever feeling as unsettled as I do right now about world events. (Okay, as a 6 year-old I was pretty unsettled about all those duck-and-cover drills we did at St. Andrews's grade school in Kenmore, New York but that was different ... even an idiot could figure out that hiding under a wooden desk wasn't much protection against a nuclear fireball.)

One keeps assuming (hoping) that cooler heads will now prevail but given the number of "hot spots" that are flaring up, you have to think the odds are against a rational resolution for each and every one of these potentially volatile situations. Of course, it doesn't help that the Bush administration has the diplomatic skills of Atilla the Hun and the United Nations seems to be all but irrelevant lately. There was a time when the President of the United States could have spoken up and the world would have listened. Now when the President of the United States speaks up most of the world either laughs or ignores him.

Sadly, I think things will get much worse on this planet of ours before things gets better. On a brighter note, at least now have a METAL desk that I can hide under.

Way to pander, Mr. Bush, and piss on the 70% of the population who are FOR federal funding of stem cell research. Instead of protecting microscopic cell clusters that are going to be discarded anyway, why aren't you doing more to protect the American troops and Iraqui citizens who are getting blown to bits thanks to you and how about giving some thought to all of the Americans who are going to die of Parkinson's or ALS?

May you wind up in a wheel chair like Christopher Reeve, Mr. Bush, and may you spend the rest of your life hoping for a cure. And if there's any justice, even if a cure is eventually found I hope it's withheld from you. (I'd wish Alzheimer's or Lou Gehrig's disease on you but I'm not sure anybody, least of all you, would even notice that you were deteriorating .)

What the author didn't mention is that Ken Blackwell has steadfastly refused to step aside as Ohio's chief election officer despite the glaring conflict of interest now that he's running for governor. (Blackwell and his staff invariably dismiss these demands for him to relinquish his chief election officer duties as "silly"!!) Given what he was able to do in that capacity in 2004, handing down a series of illegal and unethical rulings that ultimately handed Ohio to George Bush, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if Ken Blackwell were to "win" the governor's mansion in November despite being 20 points behind Ted Strickland. At the very least, there's little doubt that Democratic precincts will once again be allocated too few voting machines, resulting in people having to stand in line for hours to vote. Blackwell was directly responsible for this sleazy tactic in 2004 and it would be incredibly naive to think he won't do it again this November. Disenfranchising people who tend to vote Democratic is, after all, what Ken Blackwell does best.

One also has to wonder about Blackwell's ethics when he not only continues to give what amounts to campaign speeches at churches all over Ohio but also actually encourages them to "push" his candidacy, knowing that a group of 56 Ohio clergy members have already filed two complaints with the IRS, challenging the tax exempt status of the World Harvest Church and Fairfield Christian Church, both of whom these clergy members claim are "acting like electioneering organizations" for Ken Blackwell.

To say that I find Blackwell's conservatism repelling would be a gross understatement. Although I've been in a state of outrage for years over what the GOP has done here in Ohio, it still amazes me that Ken Blackwell got his party's gubernatorial nomination, beating out a much more palatable and moderate candidate, Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro. To this lifelong Ohio Democrat, Ken Blackwell is the very epitome of everything that's bad about Republican policies and politics. To me he's nothing more than a George Bush "knockoff" who thinks the Ohio governor's mansion will be his ticket to the White House. Here's hoping 80% of Ohioans join me in voting for Ted Strickland on November 7th (because those electronic voting machines that have been jammed down our throats could very likely make anything less than 80% for Stickland a win for Blackwell!)

Wouldn't this have been the perfect time for Matthews to have asked Ms. Coultergeist about that manifestly obvious Adam's apple that she sports? Hell, if she can speculate about Bill Clinton's sexuality based on his promiscuity why couldn't Matthews speculate about HER sexuality based on the size of her Adam's apple?