(thoughts based on my first round of research on various California measures & ballot initiatives, edited for readability but not for content)

My biggest problem with John Kerry is that he's a career politician, and a vote for him is a vote for continuing the stagnation of the two-party system. Bush tries to counter this by pretending that he's not a Washington insider, but the actual definition of a Washington insider is how close you are to the President, so he's really just posturing.

We're so deep into the election cycle right now that it's just about impossible to get any unbiased information. Earlier today I read that Sinclair Broadcasting, which owns a whole bunch of local ABC affiliates, will be airing a 42-minute "documentary" bashing Kerry on November 2nd. This is the same company that refused to air Ted Koppel reading the names of American military personnel who had died in Iraq.

To us progressives, Bill looks like a wonderful president in retrospect...but in practice, he did a lot of things that a lot of us didn't agree with, and some of which we now blame Bush for. The biggest problem, though, is that he'd be ass-raped by the Republican hype machine again.

If I were to choose some kind of "dream team" cabinet, though, both Clinton and McCain would absolutely be on it. So would Ralph Nader (though he'd probably refuse) and Barbara Marx Hubbard (who gave Dennis Kucinich the "Department of Peace" idea after she nearly got the VP nom with it herself in 1984.)

And their spokesperson would be Lewis Black. Take THAT, entrenched Washington insider media!