During WWII, they converted factories to war-time use, signed up women to work in them, and rationed materials to supply them. If this war is so important to the nation, why on earth can't we at least manage to provide a few thousand armored vehicles so that our troops can fight more effectively? Is there some kind of cronyism happening with the suppliers? We knew that IED's were a major problem before the 2004 elections. That means that they've had nearly 3 years to fix the problem. How many people have to die before they get their act together?

You're only considering two factors. 1) the popularity polls and 2) the Right's desire to win the presidency. You have to throw in a 3rd factor: The right's desire to take back Congress. Hilary Clinton is their best hope, not only to take the presidency but also to take back a majority in the Senate (and maybe even the house). Why? Because she is Hilary CLINTON, a name that is more reviled among right wingers than anybody short of Michael Moore. No matter how fed up the right wing base is with their candidates, no matter how badly the polls skew in Clinton's favor, the Republican party knows that their people will come out just for the privilege of voting against Hilary CLINTON. And while they are voting, they will throw a vote to their not so loved Republican Congressperson.

Neither Obama nor Edwards has this power. They might be able to stir some racist impulses against Obama and they might be able to feed some anti-lawyer frenzy against Edwards, but nobody else in the field has the power to draw out their voters the way Clinton can. If she wins the primary, we're going to have a tough time getting enough of a majority in the Senate to make any difference.

Even their supporters don't like them. The litany of woes set out in the responses to this post is discouraging. Reading this, I would think that the Democrats were spineless, weak, cowards who are unfit to run this nation and the Republicans were strong leaders who will efficiently do what needs to be done. Just looking at the views of their base, it would be hard to imagine that Democrats had brought us so many wonderful reforms over the last hundred years. It's not so surprising that the right has been able to effectively label the left as weak. We do half their work for them by being willing to forget triumphs and attack every failure, perceived or real.

Here's my "bumper stickers":

"Security. Prosperity. Democracy. Vote Democratic"

"National Security and Social Security: Brought to you by Democrats"

"Lincoln was a Liberal" (okay, that's not really Democratic, but it's cool)

"Clean Air. Clean Water. Clean Elections. Democrats Fight For Your Rights".

"Build a Bridge to Tomorrow. Vote Democratic."

My husband and I both have ipods, but his is the one with video. He loves it, but I'm not impressed. The picture is very small and relatively low quality. I think it would be nice to have an option of a better, larger screen with a small size sacrifice. I have a 4 Gb nano, and it's not much bigger than a credit card, but that's not a plus for me. I found myself losing it in my purse and ended up purchasing a case so it would be a bit larger. Who wants to have to keep track of something the size of a credit card all the time? It's not like you can tuck an ipod into your wallet and forget about it. Small is good, but smaller is not always better.

If people are willing to stand up against the insane tradition of blamine even the most innocent victims for being raped, maybe there is some hope. Anyway, it's good to hear that 1) the family did report the crime 2) the family declined the bribes, and didn't force their daughter to marry into the family of the rapists and 3) the family followed up when the attackers were not punished. Here's hoping that they can find some justice without being punished for not allowing their daughters rapists to get away with it.

We were landing in San Francisco after a routine flight. We touched down smoothly, then immediately took off again. The pilot's voice came over the speaker announcing that we would be circling a bit before landing again - and by the way, for the people on the left side of the plane, that other plane wasn't nearly as close as it appeared to be. I don't even want to think about what would have happened if we had been landed by a computer with no pilot supervision.

It's hard to believe that the a member of the Republican Party would appoint a man with such an astonishing lack of leadership to such an important position. Politically, this is a disaster. Of course, they didn't fire him after his incompetence after Katrina. I wonder if they actually want to win the next election, or are they hoping that Democrats will win and will then take the blame for the recession/depression that is sure to soon arrive as a direct result of this administrations bad decisions. Here's hoping that the rest of American doesn't go the way of New Orleans.