President Bush has placed this nation on a very dangerous path. He has put his balls (and ours) on the line. Let us hope he is right.

If the Iraqis actually launch chemical or biological weapons against our forces, then the Bush Administration will have been vindicated: it will prove that they were right, and the rest of the United Nations was wrong. If that happens, I'm guessing the rest of the security council will choose to fall in line with us and vanquish Iraq.

But if the war proceeds to something approaching completion without the use of "WMDs" by the Iraqis, this nation will be a paraiah -- a laughingstock -- a demon. It will show that Bush fought this war for no better reason than to avenge his daddy. It will also guarantee that George W. will follow his daddy's footsteps in the One-Term President's Hall Of Shame.

I still don't see any way for this to all come out to the good.

Political commentators tend to annoy me. It seems quite clear that, most of the time, they are inventing trends and cause/effect links where none exist.

One of the prime examples of that is in the coattail effect. We are asked to believe that the Republicans gained so many Congressional seats in the 2002 election primarily because of the unsupportably high approval ratings for President George "Big W" Bush.

I find that reasoning unfathomable. They are suggesting that, when people go to the ballot box, they say "Hmmm, I like President Bush, and President Bush is a Republican, therefore I'm going to vote the Republican ticket." Is that line of thinking anything other than boneheaded? Would ANYONE actually vote a party just because they happen to like another person in that party?

I know I do not do so. I look through the voter's pamphlet carefully. I actually read the candidate's statements, and try to reconcile those statements with what I've read and heard from that candidate. I vote based on positions and qualifications. I care not one whit about their party, although I must admit that someone who claims to be part of the Raving Loony Extreme Opinion Space Aliens Out To Get Us Party will have to be pretty amazing in order to get my vote (and there have been political parties in Oregon whose credos do not fall all that far from my invented title...).

Can't we, once and for all, get rid of the annoying habit of referring to LCD panel sizes by cutesy pseudo-acronyms? VGA and SVGA are clear enough, but as the panels get bigger, we're inundated with "ultra XGA", and "super XGA", and "ultra XGA +". It's just stupid. I can't wait for some one to choose "super ultra XGA", so we can pronounce "SUXGA".

Wouldn't it be much clearer and much less confusing to use the actual pixel sizes? If that's too long, we can use the equally unambiguous decapixels: 6x4, 8x6, 10x7, 12x10, 14x10, 16x12, 19x14, etc. Now, I can tell EXACTLY how fine the pixels will be, instead of having to search for a glossary (which, by the way, the laptop manufacturers conveniently neglect to include in their brochures).

SUXGA just sux. Get rid of it.

Attention Jared Fogle: your fifteen minutes are up.