I haven't read your article. However, the introductory blurb states why I could not support Hilary Clinton. She is not authentic. She is not an authentic anything.

I am a registered nonpartisan. I used to vote both sides of the aisle, but I now wonder how I could ever vote for any Republican for any office, after the abuses of the past few years.

However, I could not vote for Hilary Clinton at all because of her aggressive stance on Iraq, her enabling of George W. Bush. Period. She has no core values or vision for the future - rather, she thinks she's earned some stripes and is entitled to a certain amount of fealty from the left - and that she can lick her finger, test the winds, and then deserve support for whatever the winds tell her her position is.

No. I will leave the presidential ballot blank before I will vote for such a calculating, dismissive, cement-souled candidate. Even if it means another disastrous Repub regime.

Democrats MUST start putting candidates with genuine heart, concerns, vision and ideas out there. I think Obama and Edwards are on the right track - they have places they want to take this country to and they have an innate, caring, honesty that pierces the gloom of the political landscape.

I cheered when Hilary won New York the first time. But she's turned out to be not a moderate, but a run-of-the-mill calculating office-seeker, all ambition, no heart. You can't cover that up by speaking intimately on the web from someone's living room or rushing and gushing in all the right (left) places. I think she lost it when she made the cookies.

Trust is going to be a huge issue by the time George Bush packs his (faux) cowboy hat and heads back to Texas. We will truly need a "uniter, not a divider" who can pull a disillusioned American populace away from meanness, division, conflict, horrors of war, the Bush scandals yet to come - and FATIGUE - towards rebuilding a civil society of respect and care and rebirth.

Hilary should concentrate on doing a good job of representing New York and using her celebrity to assist truly worthy candidates. There's a job out there that's just bigger than her and we can't afford another diminutive president.

There are times when I can't avoid hearing george Bush speak, like when Jon Stewart plays a snippet of video of him. I've tried to imagine Bill Clinton speaking the same words as Bush on any given occasion - I'm wondering if many Americans even remember that presidents have a grasp of facts and issues and historical context. Bush's words are so often inane, and he speaks of such trivia! What world leaders must think of that guy and the Americans who let him assume the presidency I hate to imagine.

We should all be issued one of those clocks that count down the days to the end of this national nightmare.

There are times when I can't avoid hearing george Bush speak, like when Jon Stewart plays a snippet of video of him. I've tried to imagine Bill Clinton speaking the same words as Bush on any given occasion - I'm wondering if many Americans even remember that presidents have a grasp of facts and issues and historical context. Bush's words are so often inane, and he speaks of such trivia! What world leaders must think of that guy and the Americans who let him assume the presidency I hate to imagine.

We should all be issued one of those clocks that count down the days to the end of this national nightmare.

Neither party is serving the public interest - the Dems could have forced GW to veto a reasonable bill for a second time, or they could have funded operations for a shorter time, as was talked about in the past few months. They rolled over and played dead and that is what's most dispiriting about this round.

I believe that there's enough energy out there right now to put together a people's party that could field a successful presidential candidate for 2008, and perhaps some Senate seats. With someone with broader appeal and excitement than Nader.

The old order needs to be shaken up, the meek-minded shaken out, and bad policies shaken loose. We (worldwide)can't afford the path we're on in human or any other terms.

The Duh-bya administration started this campaign a few months back - it takes a little time for these language shifts to take place, i.e. "faith-based" programs. They decided early on to set the terms of the debate on anything by couching it in the terms they want used.

General Petraeus was interviewed on All Things Considered two or three months ago and I noticed then that he talked only of "Al Quaeda" as the people we're plowing down, blowing up, maiming and torturing in Iraq. I knew then that the strategy was set to instill this concept in the American public. It's SOP.

So when are the rest of us going to rename the "surge" - which is a preposterous misnomer for our escalation of the war?

Why not start a fund to take out ads in papers across America to decry this propaganda war at home? Every time they start down this road with another concept, 20 people should write letters to their local papers and point it out. 50 more should phone their local editors and demand that they get fairer news coverage. And 100 more from every metropolitan area should write, phone, email the television news networks - language counts, as Karl Rove clearly knows.

And, of course, it's time to take up a regular chant for impeachment of Cheney and Gonzales, for starters. It's time for progressive thinkers to get as relentless and repetitious as the war criminals and religious fanatics in the White House.

P.S. I was pleasantly surprised to see a NYT article on 6/22 that repeatedly referred to "religion-based" programs. The tide can be turned.