Too bad that's not a ballot option. It would make for a true referendum. As it is, the only way you can express displeasure with all candidates is to stay home. Later on you're told, "If you didn't vote, you can't complain."

In an election between Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, and Shub-Niggurath, I want the option to say No Thanks. Come up with a better slate, you morons.

I whole heartedly agree with this, and have hammer this view in a number of time when people tell me I have no right to complain... I respond, "if there was anyone worth voting for I would". It's really that simple. After all democracy is supposed to be about choice, so if I chose not to vote, then that's my choice.

Well, if you were in prison, and had a 48 percent chance of lethal injection, a 47 percent chance of the electric chair, and a 5 percent chance of escape . . . which would you vote for?

Yep. Me too!

Ken V.

I understand what you are saying, but I don't think it is a good analogy.

I understand what you are saying, but I don't think it is a good analogy.

Good enough for ME! I view the choice between Bush and Kerry as being equivalent to a choice between lethal injection and the electric chair . . . so my vote for Badnarik is not a wasted vote.

Ken V.

My only comment on Moore's prior voters registration is that it was 1992. That's 11 years ago. And how many people remember to cancel their registration when they move? I've never done it as I'm sure most people haven't.

My only comment on Moore's prior voters registration is that it was 1992. That's 11 years ago. And how many people remember to cancel their registration when they move? I've never done it as I'm sure most people haven't.

Good point, but after seeing his past "documentaries," Roger And Me, and Bowling For Columbine, I just . . . don't . . . trust him.

Ken V.

My only comment on Moore's prior voters registration is that it was 1992

Um, yeah. I registered to vote in 1986; I was 18 and stupid and didn't really know what either party really stood for, so I picked Republican. I'm not a Republican by any stretch of the imagination, but official records show that I am.

Moore's Public Service
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Since it opened, "Fahrenheit 9/11" has been a hit in both blue and red America, even at theaters close to military bases. Last Saturday, Dale Earnhardt Jr. took his Nascar crew to see it. The film's appeal to working-class Americans, who are the true victims of George Bush's policies, should give pause to its critics, especially the nervous liberals rushing to disassociate themselves from Michael Moore.

There has been much tut-tutting by pundits who complain that the movie, though it has yet to be caught in any major factual errors, uses association and innuendo to create false impressions. Many of these same pundits consider it bad form to make a big fuss about the Bush administration's use of association and innuendo to link the Iraq war to 9/11. Why hold a self-proclaimed polemicist to a higher standard than you hold the president of the United States?

And for all its flaws, "Fahrenheit 9/11" performs an essential service. It would be a better movie if it didn't promote a few unproven conspiracy theories, but those theories aren't the reason why millions of people who aren't die-hard Bush-haters are flocking to see it. These people see the film to learn true stories they should have heard elsewhere, but didn't. Mr. Moore may not be considered respectable, but his film is a hit because the respectable media haven't been doing their job.

For example, audiences are shocked by the now-famous seven minutes, when George Bush knew the nation was under attack but continued reading "My Pet Goat" with a group of children. Nobody had told them that the tales of Mr. Bush's decisiveness and bravery on that day were pure fiction.

Or consider the Bush family's ties to the Saudis. The film suggests that Mr. Bush and his good friend Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the ambassador known to the family as Bandar Bush, have tried to cover up the extent of Saudi involvement in terrorism. This may or may not be true. But what shocks people, I think, is the fact that nobody told them about this side of Mr. Bush's life.

Mr. Bush's carefully constructed persona is that of an all-American regular guy — not like his suspiciously cosmopolitan opponent, with his patrician air. The news media have cheerfully gone along with the pretense. How many stories have you seen contrasting John Kerry's upper-crusty vacation on Nantucket with Mr. Bush's down-home time at the ranch?

But the reality, revealed by Mr. Moore, is that Mr. Bush has always lived in a bubble of privilege. And his family, far from consisting of regular folks with deep roots in the heartland, is deeply enmeshed, financially and personally, with foreign elites — with the Saudis in particular.

Mr. Moore's greatest strength is a real empathy with working-class Americans that most journalists lack. Having stripped away Mr. Bush's common-man mask, he uses his film to make the case, in a way statistics never could, that Mr. Bush's policies favor a narrow elite at the expense of less fortunate Americans — sometimes, indeed, at the cost of their lives.

In a nation where the affluent rarely serve in the military, Mr. Moore follows Marine recruiters as they trawl the malls of depressed communities, where enlistment is the only way for young men and women to escape poverty. He shows corporate executives at a lavish conference on Iraq, nibbling on canapés and exulting over the profit opportunities, then shows the terrible price paid by the soldiers creating those opportunities.

The movie's moral core is a harrowing portrait of a grieving mother who encouraged her children to join the military because it was the only way they could pay for their education, and who lost her son in a war whose justification she no longer understands.

Viewers may come away from Mr. Moore's movie believing some things that probably aren't true. For example, the film talks a lot about Unocal's plans for a pipeline across Afghanistan, which I doubt had much impact on the course of the Afghan war. Someday, when the crisis of American democracy is over, I'll probably find myself berating Mr. Moore, who supported Ralph Nader in 2000, for his simplistic antiglobalization views.

But not now. "Fahrenheit 9/11" is a tendentious, flawed movie, but it tells essential truths about leaders who exploited a national tragedy for political gain, and the ordinary Americans who paid the price.

You're missing the point, which is very simple: Because they lie doesn't make it okay for you to lie.

A Democrat says, "Bush is telling lies."
A Republican responds: "Clinton lied all the time."

The response dodges/sidesteps addressing the validity of the initial statement, and implies that Bush gets a free pass because of what his predecessor did, which is patently ridiculous.

I don't know who you have been debating, and I'm a little late on this thread, but I don't know a single Conservative who responds like that. I know I ask why you think that Bush is a liar. But I read a lot of politics and most of the time can tell you why he isn't a liar. Its my first post on here so take it easy on me.

I've seen a couple of people on the tube who said their comments to Moore were chopped up to remove anything that didn't further Moore's agenda. One that remains in my head was a congressman stopped on the street by Moore and asked something about congress sending other people's kids off to war and not their own. The congressman told Moore that his nephew had just been called up and was being shipped out.

He said that part never made the final cut.

It's like researchers who toss out test results that don't confirm their thesis. What are the resulting papers worth? Bupkis.

If you ask a question, air the whole answer. Otherwise you're hiding the truth. And that puts you in bed with the folks you're criticizing.

Here is an example of his editing.

Moore gives a quote from Condi Rice saying, "Oh, indeed there is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9/11." He used it to strenghthen his point that us Republicans are a bunch of liars. Well her full quote went like this; "Oh, indeed there is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9/11. It’s not that Saddam Hussein was somehow himself and his regime involved in 9/11, but, if you think about what caused 9/11, it is the rise of ideologies of hatred that lead people to drive airplanes into buildings in New York." Don't you think those are two very different quotes with two very different meanings?

Here is a quote from another website. He said it better then I could so...

"Mike has taken a Condi quote and given it the polar opposite meaning from what she actually said. Now, Moore fans, consider this. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of video of Condi Rice talking about Iraq. If Condi had ever actually said that there was a tie between Iraq and 9/11 then Moore would have used it. So, if the Bush administration had ever actually claimed that there was a connection between 9/11 and Iraq, why would Michael Moore feel the need to use these kind of editing tricks to try and prove his point?
Because nobody ever said it, and he darn well knows it. His entire premise is based on a lie."

Case-in-point: Cheney's Cursing v. Kerry's Middle Finger. The swearing was verified and heavily reported and eventually acknowledged. The middle finger incident was reported by an Anti-Kerry Vietnam Vet and only appeared (verified via Google) on Anti-Kerry sites.

Do you think any of those two things are a big deal? I thought that Cheney cursing may have been a little overboard until I heard the reason why he did it. I don't remember the guys name, but whomever it was kept calling him a criminal without any evidence. He was doing this by saying that he still holds his Halliburton stock in one form or another (this is true? I haven't looked it up too much). He got tired of this guy.

I never heard of Kerry's middle finger deal, but I don't care if he did it or not. Its a frogging finger.