To be genuinely at peace with something requires that one has thought it through and that it seems the best course one can take.

To be at peace according to Bush is to have fired one's guns and not care who was in the way -- including the American armed forces and the Iraqi people, our reputation in the world and a lot of other factors that a truly intelligent man would have taken into account. Bush is not just a moron, he is a dangerous one.

Karen

Giuliani is wrapping himself in the religious right the way he has wrapped himself in September 11th, both to disguise his utter and absurd nudity. He has nothing, is nothing, can advance nothing. I usually despise the religious right but I have never thought they were idiots. If they fall for this poseur, they will have become idiots in my eyes.

He is a dangerous man whose smile is a rictus of cynicism and who panders to whomever he thinks will allow him to suck up to and empty out.

There's a wonderful play called "Tis Pity She's a Whore" and I feel that way about the Republican Party and the Religious Right. Each of them is trying to be the bigger panderer and trying to take turns being the pimp, selling each other's bodies and souls for the best reward of all - power. The difference is that the religious right still retains something no whore should retain. That is the power to have orgasms. If you are selling your body and still having orgasms, I am told that you are vulnerable. You can be had. You can be used. You have not yet surrendered your armor against exploitation.

The religious right still has sincere beliefs. The Republicans have long since abandoned that. As Sam Gold said in his wonderful book, "Invasion of the Party Snatchers," the Republican party is now dead, taken over by neo-cons and fake religious folks who are mocking the real ones. I am a religious moderate and I feel sorry for the Biblefolk who think the present Republican party wants more of them than to see them splayed in bed waiting for the next customer.

I was thinking about Gore's Nobel this morning and about how ignoble our President is and I was starting to feel sick. Gore has deserved the plaudits he has garnered just as Bush has deserved the odium. I was thinking of the song from "South Pacific" that starts "this nearly was mine."

Perhaps Gore will not run but at least the American people will be asked to think about what was stolen from them by the Supreme Court and the subsequent swarm of neoconservative vermin who have infected the country and causing our regard around the world to plummet so steeply.

We have fifteen months of this torture left.

We are jumping off a cliff overlooking the ocean led by a bunch of crazies and we have not called a halt to it, cast out the demons and dusted ourselves off.

If the Neocons are so determined to destroy the world, the rest of us need to cut them off and we need to destroy the base of their power. Unfortunately, that is now the Presidency and Vice-Presidency. Congress has the power to impeach and I am wondering where their nerve went.

It is an obscenity that children whose parents cannot afford health care in the private market will go without the continuity of care that makes for good health. It is an obscenity that insurance companies are more interested in their profits than in their subscribers. It is an obscenity that Americans are not covered by a single system like Medicare that guarantees at least access to good and consistent care. The biggest obscenity is that our President believes that's okay.

In his book, Invasion of the Party Snatchers, Sam Gold wrote scathing comments on the neocons and "theocons" who stole the Republican Party away from its roots in genuine conservatism rather than religio-political radicalism. Rudy is not an exception to this group. He will do what he needs to to consolidate power. He did it in New York, exiling a superb police chief who got higher ratings than he did in order to appoint a man now under federal indictment for corruption. As much as I despise the religious right, I despise Rudy more and I hope they don't endorse him. We don't need him or them. They are a spent force, the new evangelicals caring more for real crises and not anxiously spending their time with their noses in women's private parts or men's rectums.

I think Mike Huckabee is the best of a bad lot but, after seven years with a dodo as POTUS and know-nothing policies, I would rather be dragged though a mud puddle by a 900 pound pig than vote for him.

Karen

I didn't know we had a foreign policy. I thought the State Department was weaving baskets or something while Defense ran the show.

I am buying the book.

I was diagnosed at six months of age so it is not due to my "female behavior." It almost destroyed my life in the beginning because I was misdiagnosed as having Down Syndrome. I am now a 65 year old woman with a 130 IQ thanks to adequate treatment and a doctor who was not interested in fads but in treating kids appropriately.

It is profoundly dishonest for two intelligent men in public life to disown knowledge of what waterboarding is and its clinical details. All that is required is to say that they do or do not believe it is torture so that we can decide as people whether we want them to have the job for which they are interviewing.