I am reading this just before bedtime. It is like a rather peciliar bedtime story. If not for your clever writing, this story would be a real snore.

Who are these weird dull people? McCain is the only one I can stand.

Again, muchas gracias for making me glad I am Democrat.

Yours truly,

Smith

Well, this explains why the GOP wants that ogre Fred Thompson to throw his hat into the ring. What a freak show.

1. I think I've decided I like Ron Paul. Do I agree with all of his ideas? No. Would I rather see, say, Biden or Richardson win over him? Yes. Compared to the other guys running on the Republican ticket, does he scare me? No.

Paul's conservative values are actually *true* conservative values: federal government stays out of things, less taxes, no corporate welfare, no wars that don't really involve us. Now, this means that something like the Bosnian issue wouldn't have been solved under his watch, but then again, neither would have Iraq.

2. Speaking of Bosnia, there was an odd moment for me with John McCain. He criticizes Clinton when she says "Iraq is George Bush's war". Now, I do agree with him - it's not George Bush's war. Last time I checked, she voted for authorization (though, politically, she is right in that people associate the war with Bush, but he doesn't own it - we as a nation do).

But then McCain goes off about how he never said that Bosnia was Bill Clinton's war. But there's a problem: Bosnia was a success! There was a genocide going on, Bill Clinton said "Uh, hell no!" Then, without a single American casualty (though we almost lost 1 pilot who had to eat bugs for a week then go on speaking tours afterwards), Bosnia was a huge success of building an international coalition, stopping a genocide, and getting a people to overthrow their really bad leader by pissing them off by shutting down their power.

Hm - I wonder if that model had been applied in Iraq, if things would have been different.

But Bosnia was a success, and McCain is treating it as if it is the same as Iraq. I don't get that.

3. The "English as the official language question". Obama I think said it well when he said "I would not make the 'official' language, but the 'accepted' language". In other words, it's what we teach in schools, it's what we do the majority of our work in - but we don't shun someone just because they don't speak English, or want to use their own language in their own local communities (though, as history shows, if they try to reject the outside world by refusing to use English at all, they lose power).

The Republican candidates? Nope - English. Don't know it, learn it, or else we're kicking you out. Unless we want your votes, in which case we're running Spanish ads. Then we *love* Spanish.

4. Gays in the military. Why do we care? I'm sorry, if I'm in a foxhole, I'm not worried if Kevin is checking out my ass, but whether he can shoot the guys shooting at me. I'm also worried if there is ever a major war against China, that we'll send all of our heterosexual men out to fight, to die, and then the nation will be populated by women and gay men who have to repopulate the country. Odds are, we'll lose more population numbers, but we'll look fabulous.

5. A question on religion and evolution. The response: I don't know if God created the world in 6 days or 4.5 billion, but I know He did it.

Me: It was 4.5 billion, and if you don't know that, then you were not paying attention in school. Want to believe in God? Great. Want to ignore scientific progress for people who dream of living in the dark ages when we still thought the Sun went around the Earth? You are not becoming President if I can help it.

Final Results: I don't mean to sound partisan, I really don't. But when I watched the Democratic debate, there were at least 5 people who I thought could become President, and I wouldn't mind.

On the Republican side, I saw one and a half people (Ron Paul, and I don't remember the other guy, but he was the one who wouldn't use Bush at all even on speaking tours, and wanted to pull us out of Iraq. I don't remember his name, but he didn't scare me.)

All of the others? Hell no. Hell no. They lied about "Oh, Saddam didn't give us the WMD's we thought he had when he didn't, so we should have invaded! We're safer now, and if we don't leave, then al Queada will take over and the sun will turn to blood!" Their response to the health care problems? "More private industry!"

Odds are, it will be Romney or McCain who gets the nomination, and after this, I don't want either one. I guess we'll see what happens next.

A President Paul would be politically castrated by both parties about 30 seconds after inauguration. Even a President Nader would get more cooperation. Unfortunately, when you elect a president, you gotta think about how he's going to get his party to push his agenda through; its not who mouths the obvious truths about empire and blowback that we all know are true.

As the guy in Reason magazine said, I wish I lived in the kind of country where a Ron Paul could be elected president. Unfortunately, that also comes with all of the wacko portions of the libertarian agenda that are non-starters.

I love these GOP debates; what wonderful ammunition for the general election, no matter which old sad reactionary white man wins. Can we do about 30 more of these?

Not to underestimate the Democratic Party's astonishing ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, but *damn* these Republican debates are encouraging.

The scariest thing of all was the long riffing on faith, pursuant to that question on evolution, which SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN ASKED -- what are they doing, bringing that up? But of course they had to bring it up. Maybe the idea was to make Huckabee look like a nutjob (that liberal media, I tell you!), but he didn't. Well, actually, he did, but I bet my mother -- and a whole helluva lot of folks I know -- vote for him, simply because of that one answer.

I have a bad, bad feeling about this. (Plus, we have to HEAR about it.)