It's late where I live and I'm angry. This will be short. When will there be real coverage of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and Bush Administration policies and actions there? I have a very near relative with several friends serving second, third and fourth stints in Iraq. Their emails to my relative consistently refer to Iraqis as "ragheads" and talk of, often boast of, causing direct harm to ragheads. I haven't seen the term "raghead" appear even once in media coverage. The horrific and routine violence perpetrated by U.S. forces on Iraqi citizens is unremarked because Iraqis are as dehumanized to Americans as they are to the soldiers. It is so apparent that Bush and his minions have not an inkling of the real human suffering that they are causing and it is skimmed over by media reports in the U.S. so that Americans can ignore other people's loss of sons, daughters, cousins and grandchildren as easily as fingernail cuttings.

I am so tired of the free pass that the press and Congress have given this administration and its crimes that I want out of here - I used to believe that the ballot box is the remedy, but now the ballot machines are tainted as well.

Hope has never seemed so empty.

Chafee could have voted against moving Bush's Supreme Court nominees out of the Judiciary Committee, but he did not. We can't afford the possibility that Bush gets another chance to push a right-wing activist judge through - and we need to put an end to the stacking of the other federal courts with right-wing-nut judges.

Chafee's gotta go.

So, the good doctor would filibuster a bill that doesn't allow enough torture? How many Iraquis and other who have survived extraordinary rendition, Abu Ghraib, or other intimate contacts with the American military or CIA, are in a persistent vegetative state? But then, only SOME life is "sacred," right?

Definitely, those members of Congress who support the Bush Administration on torture should step up and show how innocuous the techniques are, try them out themselves.

I am so sickened by the place America is in today.

So - tell us which senators and representatives on the democratic side should be receiving a flood of faxes and emails today?

Although I am a nonpartisan voter, I have been getting calls from the Democrats all year, asking for contributions to their campaign funds. My answer has been the same in each case - I will not contribute to (directly or through a general campaign fund), or vote for, ANY candidate who has aided and abetted George W. Bush in his illegal war. Period.

When the Democrats stand up, so will I.

Interesting analysis - can anyone suggest why James Baker appeared on Jon Stewart?

"So for a lot of us, there's more at stake in Tuesday's elections than simply whether the Democrats will take control of the House or the Senate. It's a question of national identity, of finding out who we are -"

I worked in elections for many years - listening to voters who came in and asked if I "knew anything" about the people on the ballot, or who wanted to know who "all the Republicans are, because I only vote for Republicans," or who trundled into the voting booth with their purchased wives from the Phillipines to help "translate" the ballot.

Who "we" are as a people is not a question I want to get into. Who gets to allow George W. Bush to appoint another right-wing conservative to determine my personal rights or how far the environment can be trashed, etc, on the Supreme Court is of far more interest to me than our national identity, which is currently an identity of bungling, bullying, torturing 800-pound hypocrites.

Transylvania doesn't interest me, but I am seriously exploring other options - the mirror cracked a long time ago.

If ever there was a "Democrat in name only," it's Joe Lieberman. In addition to his vote to give Bush the go ahead to invade Iraq, he supported Bush's bad Supreme Court picks. I will be surprised if he doesn't jump ship officially - but what difference does it make, if he votes with the Republicans and defends their bad choices, anyway?

Please! The media pushes extensive coverage of a few Hollywood people on us to a furstrating degree. Why does anyone need to know about the divorced-from-reality lives of Britney Spears, Angelina Jolie, and Tom Cruise? And if we need to know anything about htese people, why isn't there a daily dose of tibits about Morgan Freeman, Meryl Streep, or any other Hollywood name?

National Enquirer, People, Us - maybe readers of those journals care about the strange circle of people who are obsessively in the spotlight. Why Salon?

If I hear one more reference to "Tomkat," I'll barf.

There is so much of importance happening in the world - please pass the news and analysis, and spare us the Twinkies.

Historian Douglas Brinkley suggested that G W Bush may be viewed as a laughingstock. Considering the number of people killed by his policies, who on earth could laugh?

The proof that there's no fairness in this world will be when he's out cutting brush and furtively knocking back a few swigs from a bottle while tens, or more likely, hundreds of thousands of people are attempting to put their lives back together in Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Gaza,the former "coalition of the willing" states, the United States and other places, as a result of his 8 years of "hard work."

The idea that people will continue to die or suffer injury, fear, loss of home, hope, or future in huge numbers as politicians root around for a way to save this awful man's legacy fills me with despair. We cannot let this man leave office without being called to account for the death and destruction he has caused. He should have to answer for his legacy, it's already made.