As such, its influence goes much farther, as it is part of the echo chamber of financial analysts and pundits that spout the conventional wisdom that gets regurgitated mindlessly by the markets and all its cheerleaders.

That tripe gets processed and repeated endlessly (in slightly toned down versions), allowing the process to be repeated a while later with, each time, slightly more outrageous stuff.

The WSJ Op-Ed pages are one of the early sources of the talking points of the hard right (in their legitimized version) and, as such, need to be fought.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

Will our enemies be inspired by our dissension? Probably, but that is the price we pay for having a democracy and freedom of speech.

For example, of the many waring factions in Iraq, who do we think are in fact enemies of 'the United States', rather than a 'reaction against the occupation' or 'engaged in a power-struggle against other factions' or some other such thing. Whom among them actually give a damn of US domestic dissension considering the very real, local hell in which they are more immediately entangled?

And if I am complaining, so what? Is there some bylaw that I violated?

But I wasn't. I was making a statement. But if you want to get into the issue, let's. Because it is not only an indicator of the culture's banal immaturity, but the correlation argument (american's feeling about their president=the rest of the world's feeling about america) is dead wrong.

Bush was viewed rather highly when he took the mandate for war. If I remember, nearly or over 80% of the country thought he and Biggus Dickus Cheney were the swellest guys around. The American media couldn't slobber more about how the big american war machine was going the be the ultimate emollient for easing the insertion of democracy into the never been democratized towelheads, uh, excuse me, unmodernized religious zealots.

Yet, I was in China when their Sec State said that they weren't going to go along with that. I talked to people in 4 cities who were very confused as to why the country that they had at one time looked up to was going more and more crazy. I was in Germany when they and the Russians met with Chirac to say that the line was going to be drawn in the UN. The citizens of all three countries were holding the US in pretty low regard by then. They had long thought Bush was the wrong person for the job and wondered how the US voter didn't see it. By then they  thought that the people were dead gone crazy for wanting to get into that war. (I don't remember if that was before or after Powell humiliated himself in the UN.)

I was doing a lot of work in Italy then and I know that it was not the same as in England. The people in England were being pummeled with BS'd and FUD'd into believing that they were going to be attacked any and everyday lest they go to war in a big way. The Italians were being pummeled by Burlesconi's press, but they were adamant about how banal their government was lapdogging the US.

Bottom line is that the premise is wrong. The American's view of their president has little to do with how the rest of the world sees him or them.

As far as Bush being a transparent tool of big business, you only need look at the history of who put money into his campaign and the history of how the media played the game. Just because you didn't know about it doesn't mean that Jack Welch didn't know about it. His statements to his employees about how the press he controlled (NBC, MSNBC, among others) and the people he swayed (famously Disney/ABC) were to treat the election are well documented.

The energy companies knew, the drug companies knew. They were well rewarded for their largess in getting him elected as well, first with cabinet slots and then with sweet juicy war contracts.

The rest of your remarks just prove the point that I was making. Unless your speech is able to get above the noise and then actually able the gain the attention of enough politicians who are not paid off, what is the use in calling it free speech?

Interesting that you among all people would be quoting an insurance company commercial. Notwithstanding, my allusion was meant to point out that your comments sound a lot like Bushes when he says that they hate us for our freedoms.

Never underestimate their intelligence, always underestimate their knowledge.

Frank Delaney ~ Ireland