Anyone but Bush. Please. He needs to go and he needs to go in a LANDSLIDE to prevent a repeat performance of shenanigans like what happened in 2000.

I don't care if it's Dean, Kerry, Edwards, Gen. Clark...I would care if it's Lieberman because his culture war bullshit reminds me too much of assholes like Pat Buchanan...but anyone else of the current crop would be fine. Even Rev. Sharpton would be an improvement...we'd get 4 years of entertainment, at least, instead of 4 years of revulsion, fear and loathing.

The tax cuts were a bad, bad idea. Cutting taxes while on a war footing is foolhardy. Now Bush wants to make them permanent. He also wants to make the horrible "USA-PATRIOT" act permanent. That's not just a bad idea, that's downright evil.

As far as the comments on marriage go, here's my response to those who insist "marriage is between a man and a woman." OK, fine, if marriage is going to be defined by religious standards, marriage should be a religious sacrament only and the State should get out of the business of defining and enforcing marriage contracts. No more automatic assumption that the surviving spouse inherits everything should the other spouse die. No more rules about bigamy. Divorce would be a religious matter only, which would mean a chaos of different rules depending on which religion you belonged to.

You can't have it both ways. If the State has legitimate reasons for regulating marriage as a legal contract, then you mustn't allow it to be defined by religious standards. I know that Bush and his like don't like the separation of Church and State, but it's no accident that it's in the Bill of Rights. Since other laws have established that you cannot discriminate on account of sexual preference, you're either going to have to deal with the idea of gay "domestic partnerships" with all the legal weight of marriage but without the verbiage, or you're going to have to put up with the chaos that would ensue if the State got out of the marriage business. That's the way it is.

You can't expect people to pay out of pocket for their own health insurance if they have to routinely make choices about whether to pay bills, pay rent or eat. No amount of tax incentive will change that. Most working poor take the standard deduction and don't itemize anyway, so the "incentive" simply isn't there. I said it before, I will say it again: Medical Care is as much a matter of public safety as fire departments and police. There are good reasons why fire departments and police, both of which were private entities 150 years or so ago, were made public institutions. It's time to stop the fake free marketeer blather. We need to accept the fact that private, employer-issued or personally purchased health insurance doesn't work; and that either a single-payer or public/private partnership model of health insurance for EVERYONE, and I mean EVERYONE, is a necessity to "provide for the common defense." Especially when we have seen what happens when some bozo sends Anthrax spores through the mail, and what happened in Japan when another bozo lets Sarin gas go in the subway. Some Al'Qaeda schmuck could infect himself with Smallpox and take a ride on the NYC Subway for as long as he can before he drops...do we really want to have to deal with the consequences of uninsured people with no access to health care in the aftermath of such an occurrence?

Please, folks. Decide on an opposition candidate. Leave the "vote Green" and "vote Libertarian" stuff for another election at another time. Get behind that opposition candidate and PUSH HARD. Again, if "Regime Change" is to be affected here in 2004, we need to do it by a landslide. Tonight's lame excuse for a State Of The Union message should be enough to convince anyone. VOTE THE BASTARD OUT.