Darren, Thanks for your comments on my letter. I agree that the difference between the parties is virtually nil at this point, and I yield to no one in my contempt for the gutless Dems. It is obvious that the availability of rampant cash has caused much corruption in the system; that much is not news. However, the lazy electorate can not be absolved for the presence of these facts.

The fact is, the neo cons recognized a block of votes they could reliably count on and they pandered to them. The strategy has paid off. The formula is not that hard to figure out. Candidate A appeals to a reliable, but narrowly focused base guaranteed to show up on election day. Candidate B runs the most progressive campaign possible, appealing to the interests of most of the voters, but they don't show up. Guess who wins? Why did candidate B even bother?

The evangelical right has shown up at the polls, and they've been rewarded with a measure of influence completely out of all proportion. You have stayed home out of frustration and cynicism, and the result is that you are now frustrated and cynical.

Instead of the term "voting" in my original post, perhaps I should have emphasized active participation. If you hate the gutless Dems, get as many people as you can together and descend on the next meeting of your local chapter and keep calling them on their bullshit until the message gets home. Without the confidence of having you back them at the polls, you can hardly blame them for sniffing around for votes among the people who do.

We need to get vocal, we need to let them know that we'll back it up come election day.

I just watched both videos posted at You Tube and I saw an explosion, but I didn't see conclusive proof that a commercial aircraft hit the building. What I did see in one frame is a very thin looking projectile entering the frame on the right and the next frame was an explosion. We don't know how far away the object entering the frame was, but it sure looked more like the elongated cone of a missile rather than a large jet. The cone also looks as if it is very close to the ground, which to me means the plane's undercarriage would be at best skidding across the open space.

Without analysis beyond what I can get by merely viewing it in it's poor state as posted, objectively, unless I missed something else, this video really shows nothing but that an object flew partially into frame and an explosion followed.

I read the letters about this article before I read the article. After reading the article, I am wondering if it's the same one the letter writers are commenting on. Granted, there is the trotting out of the tired Roveian talking points, but overall I thought the article was highly complimentary to Gore and to the film and its message.

If anything is awry in the review, it is more attributable to the annoying tendency of some reviewer's to occasionally equate their reaction with a higher absolute truth: "Gore's wonky but highly effective lecture-demonstration..."

My dictionary defines "wonky" as being "crooked; off-center; askew." So how is Gore's lecture wonky? Does he say anything that's not true? If it's true, then what is it about that truth that makes it wonky? If his presentation is off-center, then where is the center, and how and by what process have you been able to determine exactly where that center is?

The evil of the wonky word is that it is so sneaky; you get to cast your opponent as being slightly nutball while implying by inference that you are not so. Yet as the past five years have shown we couldn't possibly be further down the road to Wackyland than we are now. O'Hehir uses the wonky term several times throughout hi — sort of review, sort of article — but never defines why he uses it. I think this is what has set off so many letter writers who might, as I do, believe that the term 'wonky' no longer has any meaning in an American political landscape now ruled utterly by Bush logic: "We are a nation of laws, except when it might apply to me," or "People keep talking about how many people are being killed in Iraq, but we're fighting a war on terror, and we're going to keep on fighting it until people all over the world no longer have to live in fear of being killed by people who kill them to fulfill the needs of their own agenda."

Al Gore, wonky? Puh-leeze! If so, I'll take his wonkiness any day and ask for more.

To the other letter writers, I would advise perhaps reading the article again and see if you don't see a different tone emerge from O'Hehir's words. With some judicious editing of a couple of key phrases, it's really not as bad as you have made it out to be.