I was talking about the article. My comments had absolutely nothing to do with you. Usually that's what I do...respond to the content of the article or the posted item, not to the "responses" unless I am personally provoked. And usually not even then. To all those who want a thread where they can bash each other incessantly with the typewritten word...I have no problem with that. Go ahead. But I do reserve the right to voice my opinion about the ARTICLE without you thinking you're necessarily the center of my attention. Thank you for that courtesy.

I dislike Fox, not because it is "anti-Democrat", but because, as a federally licensed broadcaster, it is indebted to the American public and has been endowed with a public trust. And I don't believe that their indebtedness is served by blatantly partisan positions and doctored, filtered, twisted or otherwise edited misrepresentations of the "news". Opinions are ok, but they need to be identified as editorial opinions. And it isn't too much to expect that they be based on the facts.

I got my journalism degree from the University of Washington. Old school. Where news was news, and propaganda was something news people didn't do. Unfortunately, old school is pretty much obsolete. How's that for reality?

Could we PLEASE for just a moment get away from the superficiality in analyzing these candidates. Talking about blowing kisses and glancing blows is not the kind of information I would hope ANYBODY is taking away from these debates, with the exception of the doofus who writes the RNC talking points.

While this forum is usually rife with smart-ass wit...which is what I like about it...it is also smart-ass and witty enough to zero in on the meat and potatoes of the issues and incidents at hand.

If I want glib cracks and stretching for negativity, while passing over the urgently important positions and opinions of the candidates who are vying to clean up the mess that is US, I could be watching Fox News.

Critical, ok. Clever, ok. Silly and trivial, not ok.

We know what Tim Johnson is recovering from. What kept McCain from voting...recuperating from his Baghdad shopping trip, or his moving rendition of "Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran"?

Maybe I'm for it, maybe I'm not. Maybe I'm partly for it, maybe I'm partly not. You can't fool or please all of the people all of the time ...but maybe, just maybe, you can get away with not putting your vote out there on the line, and on the record. Think anyone noticed?

There is something very deep and basic about George Bush's fixation on the old West, and his vision of himself in the saddle.

The day the true extent of this finally sunk in for me was the day he smirked his way haltingly through the famous "wanted dead or alive" speech. "There was a saying in the old West" that he had heard about and seemed to want to educate the rest of us about...as though we were just hearing it for the first time and he had just discovered his own cleverness. Wanted, dead or alive. A simple idea for a simple man.

It's the ultimate power. The sheriff who can declare who lives or dies, without benefit of the courts. Judge Roy Bean being drunk and all. This is the world of Bush's twisted psyche. Where there are no laws, except his. And where he is accountable to no one. And where John Wayne swagger makes you a real man, even if you're hiding under your own bed while your deputies and the mob they whip up do the hanging for you.

The very law was lawlessness in Bush's old West.

And that's just the way George likes it.

I'm with Garry Owen...it's bad enough Bush is doing this, and belligerently insists on continuing his disastrous course.

It's bad enough Bush exhibits nothing but callous disregard for the carnage he is inflicting on our troops and innocent Iraqi's. And for the aftermath.

And it's bad enough that there are dozens of quotes over the past several years in which he smirks that he has absolutely no trouble sleeping at night.

But now we have to be slapped with Laura's crap about how hard this is on THEM!

Note to Laura Bush: I've been through three deployments of two children to Iraq. You have no fucking idea of what fear and stress is. And I've been lucky...my kids are alive.

How DARE you even suggest that ANYONE should care about the weight of this situation on you and its chief perpetrator. All those idiots who are "praying" for you and W would be better Christians if they started praying for the troops who are bearing the horrific consequences of this...and for a way out of your husband's mess.