It seems apparent to me that "natural gas" refers to several things as alternatives to accumulating big money. This could include the internet buzz around a candidate, a devastating rumor, either true or false, or a "macaca" moment in which the candidate shoots off their own foot.

Look at it this way: Twenty years ago, a high dollar ad on 60 minutes might reach 30 to 40 percent of likely voters...a huge, concentrated strike at the voters. Today, there are so many choices in programming and entertainment, there will never again be the opportunity to hit large percentages of voters by using only money.

Money is a big deal, sure. But is it the money, or the bang for the buck? Look at the racist ad Bob Corker used to beat Harold Ford. Most everybody in Tennessee saw that. How? Because the news played it for FREE over and over and over. By the time it was all over, millions had seen a white girl saying she met Harold at the playboy mansion and for him to "call me, Harold".

So how much money did the Repubs spend to trash Congressman Ford? Very little. They started a buzz, and the news and internet ran with it.

Its a loooong time until Election Day. And every single day until then, these candidates will have a news camera, home video or cell phone camera trained on them. Never before has that been the case. All the money in the world won't help the candidate who utters a racial slur, or loses his temper, or as we saw in '04 with Dean, one whose microphone makes him sound crazy.

Another certainty is that railbirds of a certain age will sorely miss Hunter S. Thompson this time around.

Please, stop it. STOP IT! The horse race reporting of presidential election is not neutral. It feeds the beast. In fact, it IS the beast.

Please, Joan Walsh, set a standard: disavow all horse race reporting right now. Don't devote one more kb to it.

Instead, lead the way with a discussion of issues, position, policies, histories. Tell us what McCain says he would do and what he has done in the past. How about telling us in some detail how Vilsak or Bayh have actually governed?

Unlike the weather, which everyone famously complains about but does nothing to change, we can change the nature of political reporting -- and by extension, politics themselves, by simply refusing to play that game.

Make a vow to engage in journalism which improves the national debates, not just wallows in its lowest neigborhoods. Take a clue from Prof. Jay Rose of NYU and Press Think and actually use the power of the press to help make an informed educated decision.

Plus, it is just bad strategy. How many of us -- I count myself in this number -- backed Kerry not because we liked him or were inspired by him or thought his policies were brilliant , but because we believed the hype that he was electable? Why make that mistake again?

I am sorry, but McCain is the biggest phony going...he is a media darling, having put his annoying puss out there to hog as much exposure as possible. He has pandered to the Bush Administration and to right wing kooks, the same bunch who created outrageous stories about him in 2000. His solutions for Iraq are bogus, his excuses for supporting the war as lame as Bush's. This man is a charlatan, a cad, a man who has decided to get along to get along...some maverick. All the idiots, including media pundits, who were taken in by this creep are a sorry lot. If America elects him, expect another lousy Presidency, probably not as godawful as Bush's, but pretty darn bad.

What a waterfall of useless bastards, all of them.

It's Monica!

Twenty bucks says the Edwards/Vilsack ticket, or the Obama/Visack ticket will be pounding the final nail into the "Southern Strategy" coffin come 2008.

The only way to ensure that the electorate cares whom they elect is to hold the election on the first Monday following April 15 - and make it a national holiday. Who cares when Election Day is? No one gets off work because of it - not by law, at any rate. Put it on a Monday, and make it a national holiday, and as soon as possible after Filing Day - we'll see whether the next set of electees know how to work together and avoid waste - and whether they are ever re-elected.

Mr Scherer's essay doesn't help our current situation, the result of decades of payments for school athletics - not to mention decades of athletic scholarships (isn't that an oxymoron? An "athletic scholar"?) Alexander Maslow said "If your only tool is a hammer, you view every task as a nail" - and politicians are all hammer-heads. They all know - to one extent or another - how to win. Few know how to do - likely because few of them have ever done a day's honest work in their lives, let alone met a payroll or survived a genuine audit.

Competition in government leads to one thing: war. That and heinously expensive elections. What moron believes in the honesty of a man whom people have paid $30,000,000 to elect to a $200,000/year job? No man so elected can be honest: either he will screw his constituents (hoi polloi) or he will turn his coat and screw the men who got him elected. Neither course will ever include anything constructive, save by accident.

Of the limitless "errors" in the Constitution, the acceptance of elections that become contests is particularly unconscionable. To make the jobs of legislator, executive, or judge paid positions is bad enough: to make them prizes in a contest is simply asking for - well, the situation that now prevails: the sack-race of idiots, yielding the current spectacle: the Idiot-in-Chief.

McCain by a Monica, and a No Torture POW!

and the Television has a new Program to fit them all!

STARING:

George

Newt

Tom

Dick

Donnie

and Trent.

With a Cast of well over THREE THOUSAND Americans, missing Limb, Life and the Pursuit of Happiness.

This PROGRAM IS JUST FOR YA'LL

"BIGGEST LOSERS" and it isn't even on FOX TV, or is it?

The PRIZE: a trip with KEN and they all need to be LAYED, in absentia.