It is impossible speak intelligently on a subject in a sound bite. It is what they critisized Kerry for, but he was right. Often sound bites incite an emotional reaction rather than critical thinking.

Of course the heads of major countries should talk. Nixon went to China and Kennedy spoke to Kruschev. Unlike the current administration, dialog is not the same thing as getting in bed with someone. Negotiation is not a dirty word.

Although I have my qualms about Hillary Clinton, there was little difference in what she said. She never said in the first place that she would NEVER speak to hostile foreign leaders.

And isn't it better that she says she will speak to the President of Iran than to bomb Iran? Who by the way is not, by definition a dictator, he was elected and will be out of office at some point. He isn't the sole decision maker in Iran.

Also, there are so many stupid soundbites about these people. Like death to America. Most Iranians would not say that. And who knows if anyone really said that. They could be showing a video of a group of Saudi Arabians chanting Death to America and most Americans wouldn't be able to tell if they were Iranian or Arab or Pakistani. Or if they were speaking Farsi or Arabic or Samoan.

This is precisely what I mean about sound bites and their emotional appeal. It's much more difficult to think critically than it is to blindly accept some BS that passes for news in most media outlets.

The flip-flop crap was used against Kerry to great effect when he made the comment "I voted for it before I voted against it". That was a rather inarticulate statement, but the voters should have asked themselves how a senator gets to vote twice on a bill. Any thinking individual should have realized that a lot of senators must have voted against it before they voted for it.

Sometimes I wonder how democracy can work if people don't spend the time necessary to understand the processes involved or to wonder how promises made can possibly be kept.

Hillary seems to be a lot more potent and effective campaigner than Kerry. I suspect she'll shrug it off by next November.

Unfortunately, I can think of so many opportunities that both Edwards and Kerry missed to use the same kind of implied insult or bumper sticker kind of retort that Rove had Cheney and Bush use.

Do you remember when Cheney said he'd never met Edwards? The implication being that Edwards was never came to work. If Edwards had replied with something, anything, implying that Cheney's memory wasn't what it used to be, it would have been better than leaving the viewers with the impression that Edwards was lazy or too busy to do what people elected him to do. Edwards responded the next day with pictures of the two of them shaking hands on more than one occasion, but the damage was done.

The flip flop comments from Bush and Cheney or the bull shit from the Swift boaters both offered a chance for Kerry to point out how the Rove tactics worked to destroy democracy and to fool voters rather than attempt to encourage useful debate. Pointing out that the comment about flip flopping shows a remarkable lack of knowlege about how Congress works might have been a decent reply....

Too late now, but damn, it should have been different.