Maybe you're on the road to waking up, but I'm curious as to how any sentient being could be gulled into voting for W twice. I had enough trouble understanding how anyone who considered himself a conservative could have remained in the GOP after the sorry spectacle of Dronin' Bobby Dole being run as a soft pitch to Clinton's second term campaign.

Dole's phony win in the primaries followed on the heels of the complete capitulation of the GOP in Congress, led by Dole and Gingrich, after the braying announcement of a "republican revolution" anf its "contract with America". The GOP had completely thrown off the mask of conservatism by that time.

By the time the brainless wonder from Connecticut masqueraded as a Texan for his first presidential campaign any conservative with a shred of discernment should have been able to see that the GOP is a socialist party. It's more than a little puzzling to me to hear people state that they have awakened, finally, after having voted for Bush twice.

Taking 8 years to awaken from such a deep, self induced slumber presents the image of someone who wears the snooze button on his alarm clock down to a nubbin before finally dragging himself out of bed.

You made a good point, though I'm hard pressed to call our situation with Iran "cold." Forgive me for quibbling, but though I wouldn't call it hot, it's far from just a cold war. In fact, it may be outright boiling before long.

That being said, recalling the witless Jimmy Carter, lo, those decades ago and comparing him with George Bush today has driven home EMPHATICALLY one thing to me: Do NOT put "born-again" evangelicals in The Oval Office. Though we might quibble which was worse, both men's belief in himself as God's instrument on earth seems to have goaded both Bush and Carter into naively pursuing policies saner folk would never have. And, for the future, If someone wants to play the tambourine, roll on the floor and speak in tongues," Good for him!" I say. Just keep him/her far away from The Oval Office.

The downside will be we'll have to press 1 for ebonics.

True enough. I see McCain more along the lines of Eisenhower- another mediocre president who might well have been a Democrat if only they didn't already have a canddate. We'll end up with a democrat in the white house no matter who wins.

" Barring a miracle, we’re going to be picking up after Bush for at least as long as Carter, and as bad as Carter was, he wasn’t so stupid to try to cause a new cold war." Here's a little news flash for you: Carter DID start up a second cold war when he coerced the Shah to let Khomeni return from exile. Carter thought he had common ground with the Ayatollah because, after all, they were both Men of God. That's the main "whoopsie" Jimmah caused that we've been dealing with for nearly 30 years and there's no forseeable good outcome to it.

Steve Berg wrote:
"The bankers recently bought their way to a revised bankruptcy statute. Not surprisingly it was much harder on imprudent saps who got in over their heads financially. So, I see no reason not to hoist these thieves on their own petard, and let them go through bankruptcy under the law they paid so much to get passed after writing most of it themselves"

As it turn out, part of the bad debt the bankers want the taxpayers to clean up for them turns out to be delinquent credit card accounts and defaulted student loans- not just sub-prime mortgages that have gone bad.

As a Realtor, the company I work for has us take yearly update classes given by our attorney. He describes Title Insurance as being the perfect business model: Collect the premium and KEEP it. It looks like the bankers may be trying to improve on that: Loan money with interest and if it gets paid back, keep it. If it doesn't get paid back, get the taxpayers to pay it back and then keep it.