It becomes more sickening every day, so much so that I can rarely bring myself to write a comment.

Two points:

1. Pannetta says Bush "understands that he won't be able to achieve the policy goals he wants if the country remains divided." On first read, I assumed this meant for Iraq to remain divided in Shia and Sunni enclaves. Then I realized he meant the U.S. is divided and that impedes policy success. Give me a break! Frankly, I don't see what difference it makes if the U.S. is "divided" because we're never consulted, unless perhaps if the Dems cut off funding for the war. Hey, there's an idea.

2. Baker says "...I'm not going to answer that because that would mean I'd have to psychoanalyze the inner workings of his mind, and I don't do that." In other words, the answer to whether the administration can/will change course in Iraq depends on the workings of Bush's booze-addled, voice-of-God hearing, incurious mind, and the whims of his henchmen/puppeteers. That is the most galling aspect: the commission report should be a report to the nation -- including Congress, the Pentagon and the American people -- not just to his Royal Highness and Almighty Decider. The world and all the lives here and in Iraq are too fragile to be entrusted to any one person, and in this case, the one in charge is a few rungs below the benign and logical philosopher/king.

This is just too important to be done on Bush's time table and according to his unilateral decisions. Is there anyone left in the world who cannot see this?

Excuse me if you've already heard this, but I heard one of the sports-talk radio network guys from ESPN or Sporting News say the other night that the wife of the Spurs or Rockets owner, I can't remeber which, pressured the Commish to change to a synthetic ball becuse she didn't want animal skins used.

I guess it's a sign of the times that the news has gotten so universally absurd and depressing that we quibble over the comics section instead, because it is more intellectually stimulating than deciphering the inanities of another stammering Bush press statement on whether we're winning in Iraq. Anyway, I don't think this cartoon necessarily means to say that the space program is a complete waste that is only there to produce huge contracts for the aerospace industry. Yes, I understand that is what the action implies -- that while the rich industrialist (Cheney?) lives in a palace, the astronaut goes to the moon for something so stupid as to buy a cup of coffee. Sometimes I feel that way about the space program, too, as it has devolved from its impressive beginnings. And I am mistrustful of its new mission -- Mars -- if only because Dubya thought it up so it must be stupid. But I suspect -- and here's the part where I project my own beliefs onto Ruben Bolling, and that means I am biased -- that he doesn't feel strongly that there is no future for mankind in space, or even that a moon base is a patently bad idea. I think he's just having fun with the moon base story as an allegory for present-day government missions, like the war in Iraq, which seem to have no justification beyond enriching the mega-corporations. Meanwhile, as a child of the 60s, I liked this cartoon, maybe because it reminded me of the Howard Johnson's on the space station in Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey. Like it or not, space exploration will "take off" when there's some economic justification that lures private investment. We've seen this with the launching of telecommuncations satellites. If the moon were a hollow ball filled with oil, you can bet Halliburtexxon would be drilling and sending tankers back to earth, or building a flexible pipeline.

Your police/crime argument is dead wrong. This is not a police action, like intervening so Milosovic doesn't kill more Bosnians. This is pre-emptive war, an unprecedented and un-American invasion of a country that posed no threat to the U.S., falsely painted as the central front in the so-called war on terror. How would you like it if the police entered your neighborhood, hunted down and hanged your alderman, and killed thousands of your friends and neighbors, in order to keep the "potential criminals" occupied and unable to go to the wealthier neigborhood across town to commit crimes? I imagine you'd be planting a bomb in the path of the next police car.

The best place for the Dems politically, and for the nation and world, is to be opposing the idiotic surge plan. Yes, they'll raise the minumum wage, enact some 9-11 Commission provisions, etc, all well and good, but the war in Iraq is the central issue facing America, and saving the world from Bush's destructive ways is the reason the Dems were given Congress by the voters. This is precisely what they need to do this week. As I emailed my congressman and senators yesterday, they need to reassert their constitutional role as a CO-EQUAL branch of government, and they need to do it NOW on this issue -- the direction we take in Iraq. To do any less is to cede democracy to a tyrant.

I don't care much about college football, or sports that much any more, but I like good writing and analysis. Two gems:

1. Your explanation that if you subtract the sack yards from the passing yards, Smith would have been better off taking a knee 14 times.

2. The image of OSU defenders tilting their heads like confused puppies.

Keep up the great work