Let's talk about replacing GWBush in 2004.

American myths of masculinity draw on the strong, silent archetype -- John Wayne and Gary Cooper, later Charles Bronson and Charlton Heston, and more recently the subarticulate comic book action heroes like Sylvester Stallone and, yes, Ahnuld. American portraits of maleness have always favored instinct over intellect, action over reason. Rhett over Ashley. Patton over Marshall. Kirk over Spock. In this context, Bush's frat-boy past and Arnold's "playful" girl groping (never mind that it looks like creepy power-mongering when you really examine it) qualify as youthful expressions of the same testosterone that makes for grown-up action heroes. By comparison, Howard Dean's choleric outbursts look like Elmer Fudd spluttering, and the aristocratic let-us-reason-together authority of John Kerry comes across as lack of muscle tone.

"Good riddance" may not be a particularly eloquent thing for Bush to say about Saddam -- but comic-strip heroes don't have to be eloquent. In his interview with Diane Sawyer, Bush was like a guy in a sports bar, not much inclined to big-think. Dirty Harry doesn't talk much, and always in words of one syllable, but while the police commissioner is still fretting about getting a proper search warrant Harry has already offed the bad guy with his great big pistol.

timber, Let's face it; it's not so much that GWBush is preferred to anybody else. It's that the democrats don't have any agenda, and continue to fight amongst themselves.

I guess I'll go back to Nader - he's still the best choice on principle.

timber, Let's face it; it's not so much that GWBush is preferred to anybody else. It's that the democrats don't have any agenda, and continue to fight amongst themselves. At one point, I had hoped that Howard Dean would be the best candidate to overtake GWBush, but it's not to be. I've given up on the democrats too - they don't deserve to win anything. I guess I'll go back to Nader - he's still the best choice on principle. Those knuckleheads in the democratic party has shot themselves in the foot.

Here's Ralph Nader's (Green Party) platform.
http://www.greenparty.org/Platform.html

Rings' ends, and a darker story begins
By Diane Carman
Denver Post Columnist

It was 10:30 in the morning and I was souped up on caffeine. After struggling to stay awake through the first two episodes of "The Lord of the Rings," I knew enough to ingest sufficient stimulants before entering the theater this time.

And I don't know if it was the coffee or the diet cola or what, but I finally got into the whole J.R.R. Tolkien thing. I was amused, enlightened, moved. In fact, I was transported to another fantasy world altogether.

Iowa.

At the beginning of "The Return of the King," Frodo speaks the ominous words: "The days are growing darker." And I knew just what he meant. Only 29 days until the Iowa caucuses.

Things are going to get medieval.

But before Karl Rove arrives as the faceless dark knight, we need a bit of scene-setting.

In this, the finale to the trilogy, we rediscover Frodo and his faithful sidekick, Sam, where we left them at the end of Part Two, in the gloomy swamp with the craven, duplicitous Gollum. Gollum simply has to be the face of the insurance industry, the seductive villain who tries to lead even the most wide-eyed hobbit astray in election years. There's no other possible explanation.

Frodo and Sam, the guileless Iowa voters, are exhausted after the first two episodes spent slogging through the haunted forests of the Bush administration. Furthermore, they're hungry, jobless and have no health insurance.

Cut to Lady Arwen, the beautiful maiden played by Liv Tyler, daughter of a rock star, who came from L.A. to save the world and finance the campaign of the front-runner.

"Reforge the sword," she said (and no matter what her dad thinks, it wasn't a sexual innuendo).

Enter Gandalf, the white-bearded wizard, who has adopted Pippin, the shy undecided voter, and set out on a white horse to save humanity. (Ian McKellen is almost as good in this role as he was playing Maggie Smith hilariously kissing Jimmy Fallon on "Saturday Night Live" last year.) Anyway, I'm pretty sure he's playing Al Gore.

"We come to it at last, the great battle of our time," Gandalf said, trying to unify the party despite factions bickering over the ring, the sword, the magic glow stick, war, peace and prescription drug benefits.

Torches burst into flames, bells peal, legions of knights in armor leap onto their horses and earnest Democrats from all over the country gallop into Middle America knowing full well they could get slaughtered in the final battle anyway.

Sure enough, their sadistic opponents mock them. "The age of Democratic men is over," said the Bill O'Reilly lookalike with the dental disability. "The time of the Republican Orc has come."

But most of the Democratic hopefuls scrambled over the rocky precipices and fetid marshes of deadly debates anyway.

John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich stagger in under the weight of their swords. Al Sharpton, the ever-witty Gimli, promises a valiant fight. Carol Moseley Braun plays Eowyn, the sole woman with the guts to go to battle. Dick Gephardt keeps striking poses as the bland, blond Legolas. And Howard Dean is doing his best mighty Aragorn imitation.

Meanwhile, surrogates for John Kerry and Joe Lieberman are hacking off the heads of Democrats that displease them, and throwing them back into the crowded field in a reckless show of pique. They came into this fight with all the advantages heavy armor, party loyalty and years of experience can provide (zilch), and they're so mad about being ignored they've resorted to behaving like Orcs.

Wesley Clark, in classic military-brass style, is waiting to gallop in triumphantly after the serious bloodletting has ended.

"Become who you are born to be," says Aragorn, energizing his base. "You shall live to see these days renewed. No more despair."

Not all the voters are convinced, but with his magic sword aglow with Internet campaign contributions, the front-runner leads his scraggly, hapless army into battle.

The enemies surround the leader of the early polls and torment him with slings, arrows and attack ads.

Gandalf gives the command to advance. Aragorn struggles to lead as the others snipe at him, complaining that he's not a real warrior. He didn't support the Iraq resolution.

Meanwhile the Mumakil, giant elephants with names like Halliburton, Enron, Invesco, stampede the weary masses, leaving them broke and robbed of their 401(k) investments.

Finally, Aragorn appeals to the one power that can save him. He awakens the living dead: the apathetic, those not registered to vote, the Democrats and independents who checked out in disgust when the Orcs raided the treasury for tax cuts.

Their force is enough to overwhelm the naysayers and scare the scales right off the Orcs, whose leader, with his cockeyed smirk, is a dead ringer for Dick Cheney.

Now, I don't want to give away the ending. Let's just say it looks like Aragorn is going to come out on top in this episode.

But this isn't Minas Tirith, after all.

It's Iowa. And it's only the beginning.

The Democrat party today has no self-consistent values, political principles, or platform.

I now know that Ralph Nader stands for a platform with a 100 point program, all but three points of which I hate. (The three are abolishment of the death penalty

, ending the war on drugs,

and the refusal to sacrifice civil rights to the war on terrorism)