While we've been putting this war on the credit card, the credit card hasn't been American Express, or Visa, or even MasterCard. Americans aren't being asked to buy war bonds as they were during WWII to help fund the war (which, by the way, would have had the effect of soaking up all that liquid capital that went into the housing bubble). No. We've been putting the war on our store cards: The Chinese Cash store card, and the S. Korean cash store card, The Abu Dabi and Saudi Arabian store card, etc. This is debt owed to sovereign nations who are really going to want their money back. Since this debt is external, that huge sea of American dollars being held by foreign governments (as T-bonds and T-bills) carries with it the real risk that the American dollar will become worthless which will, in turn, destroy the American economy.

The Shrubbites love to talk about security. Who is more secure? The family who is in debt up to their eyebrows and is having problems making their debt payments and are constantly being dunned by collection agencies or the family that has its debt under control and is current on its payments?

We've been here before. Vietnam (and its attendant guns and butter policies) left us with a huge overhang of foreign debt. It was the proximate cause of the wage and price freeze in 1971 as well as our abandonment of the gold standard at the same time. There are two major differences between then and now. One, we were just transitioning from a creditor nation to a debtor nation. Now we have been a debtor nation for 40 years or so. And, two, back then we were pretty universally respected and liked. Not so much anymore. The world is different.

The risks to America from its irresponsible behavior are much, much greater than they were after Vietnam. Hopefully, the 'C' student who is The Current Occupant won't cancel the 2008 elections because he clearly isn't up to the task of managing those risks. Nor is he up to leading America through the painful steps that will be required to right our international financial boat.

I know. I wanted independent; I got domineering. We got divorced.

I did eventually get independent. So now I negotiate a lot. But she will open her own pickles, even if I'm in the room, unless she can't. Then the bigger and stronger part gets called in.

I can't and won't argue with a thing you said in your article. I struggled through the article because I had focused on Mr. Carlson's sentence before your highlighting. A sentence that you mentioned last. I had seen Mr. Paxton's interview of Mr. Bolton before as well as numerous other interviews performed by British journalists. It has always struck me British journalists were substantially more professional than their American counterparts. I kept wondering if you would suggest that the American media should compare and contrast themselves to the media in other countries that have a vigorous media before they start claiming that their standards are so much higher than other's.

By way of contrast, I have been interviewed exactly once in my life. I was sitting on my suitcase in a very crowed Huston Station in London, completely fried from a trip that had started in St. Louis that still had miles and miles to go when I was approached by a young woman of about 25 and an older man who looked to be in his early 50s. They were collecting public reaction to something that the Chief of Police in Manchester had said. There were two aspects of this that were interesting. First, after the preliminaries of would I agree to be interviewed etc., they said, "Now don't tell us anything you don't want us to publish." The second came after the interview was over when they were collecting information about me. How old are you? I admitted to being 36. (this is the hilarious part) They turned and looked at each other and said, simultaneously, she: You see, I told you he was old; he: You see, I told you he was young. I said, "What the hell is going on?" That's when they explained the breadth of demographics that they wanted (I qualified as middle aged @ 36 apparently). And the breadth of the spread was impressive because it wasn't just sliced just by age. They had over two dozen interviews so that they could ultimately publish about a half a dozen. All this just for a public reaction story.

I seriously doubt that our journalists expend such care in getting differing points of view when preparing their articles.

The government knows better than you and will protect you.

Why, indeed, do we care?

You freely admit that we will not know nor will we understand the dynamic in their marriage. Nor, in my opinion, should we. Where she elects to stand is surely her decision and, I suspect, her decision making process is, at this point, on automatic.

Why, indeed, do we care?

I, for one, don't. Her husband, a (to use the phrase I learned from the ladies at broadsheet) serial cheat and notorious hypocrite, is the player here. She and their children are collateral damage. Can't they be left alone to come to terms with the behavior of their husband/father without the cacophony of a boatload of clueless people intent on gorging on their private agony?

Ms. Traister, have you no decency?