The big question becomes what do we do about it? Do we sit back and count our woes, do we buy gold, do we open ANWR or do come up with a legitimate plan to pull ourselves up from our bootstraps. Looking at Congress, it would seem we hold another anti-Bush investigation and pay more taxes.

Or, the other view: Let's remove Cheney from the presidency. You all elected his…and Rove's…pitch-man you call the president. Together they have squandered a trillion dollars in new national debt, overseen the traceless evaporation of billions into the political-graft and humanity-destroying machine some still call an "administration." Oh, and let's not forget the twisting of Christianity's message to serve billionaire, political, and lobbyist parasites from Houston to Helena and Harrisburg.

I for one want to see politics as usual exorcised from Washington and state houses.

McCain can't do it. Post traumatic stress syndrome, party-boy-ism, and senility will give us a much damaged Reagan, but without the manufactured Hollywood charm, wit, or storm-trooper wife to run the show for him. (Is anyone else over the aging-Barbie-doll- on-the-sleeve thing?)

Similarly, Hillary can't do it. Like McCain, she is the system in so many of its most twisted forms, despite a real goal of elevating some of the less than obscenely rich.

So, I'm very ok with Barak. A man raised with an intellectually brilliant, humanly inclusive, and polyglot perspective should lead us into this new millennium, and without having sold his soul to the current twisted powers that be. A lesser man, with lesser talent, will only perpetuate the now melting lie of globalization, aka, the perpetuation of America's slash-and-burn approach to its own people and the planet.

This empire will get even more untenable as Cheney (and his mouthpiece, W) further destroy the dollar and our position in the world.

In our future (aka, the more intelligent 50% of young people), within the international community, and among our best and brightest and most productive young adults, Barak instills faith in something beyond this foul and corrupt system and its mindless arrogance. He suggests that returning meaning to our lives is the element that will make or break us.

Look around you at the shopping mall outside Charlotte or Chicago…is that what you call meaning? Is meaning pretending we’re still the land of Ward & June Cleaver? Wouldn’t Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, and Lincoln shake their heads in disbelief at how our greed and superficiality are squandering everything they gave us? Wouldn’t they find TV evangelism about the foulest thing ever known to mankind?

There was a time when we spoke from values, having endured the Great Depression and defeated fascism. Is the best we can do only to learn some of the methods of the SS just to keep more billions nice and cushy? Let's please not sit forever in "our" (ok, your) mega-houses in Atlanta and Dallas sprawl, parked in traffic in fearful tank-like Hummers, and pretend this neo-con world is working. It is coming unglued before our eyes.

Steve...what planet are you on? Do you really think that someone raised(?)in the manner of BHO; in the cesspool of Chicago politics; without one iota of any record of achievement;who wholeheartedly supports isolationism and countless other ideas which have a historical record of impoverishing nations; has any idea what will or will not work in the real world? Mindless arrogance? He is the epitome of that. Get a grip young man...look at what is real, not some hyped, imaginary, desolate landscape painted by a gifted charlatan who promises change, but who will, in the end,do nothing more than keep alive the notion that the end justifies the means, as long as he gets to define the end.

It is so very simple. You cap the price on gas at $2.30 a gallon, diesel at $3.00. You don't tax it. You cap it. After all we are "at war" and this is what you do when you are at war. The oil companies still make there money, the government still gets it's taxes and the people get a break that restores confidence in the economy. Second you order all states that charge taxes on food (Utah) to remove the tax for one year. Finally you demand that President Bush call Mitt to be a special Zar over the economy. Republicans and Democrats, we need Mitt. However I must say that I believe this drive to destroy the US Dollar is what Bush wanted and has worked to achieve. North American Union?

Jim- obviously you have never studied economics. Capping prices results in shortages. Fuel is an inelastic commodity. If you cap oil, then you will have fuel shortages that you have never seen before in your life. The same thing happens with rent control, you wind up with less houses/apartments to rent with poor maintenance. There is NO incentive to make more.

The problem is eco-nazis and NIMBYs have opposed refinery building in the US. We have plenty of oil, but little refinery capacity. The last one to be built was in the mid 1970s.

We need to rid ourselves of oil in any case by going to alternative fuels such as ethanol - in particular cellulistic ethanol. It's a matter of national security that we stop being dependent for energy by people who want to kill us.

Deomocrats offer no solutions to the upcoming election, but they DO offer a lot of added burdens and taxes.

wow! reading through these comments it amazes how there are so many smart people with simple solutions to all our problems! it really makes me wonder why you guys are mindless, clock-punching morons instead of world leaders, what with all your superior intellect and all.