bush may have inherited a slight recession, but he turned it into a depression by turning a surplus into a deficit, shifting the tax burden onto middle american consumers, encouraging corruption, escalating income stratification, running up gargantuan military commitments, killing off renewable energy, decimating the natural environment, gutting the economic reporting apparatus and much more...

As usual, Wasserman is wrong, wrong, wrong. George W. Bush is not the worst president ever. He is one of the best presidents. Wake up and smell the bong water.

"It's my right to run."  

This is Ralph Nader's core case in announcing his 2004 presidential candidacy. Yes, Nader has a legal right to do this. He also has a legal right to donate $100,000 to the Republican Party and become a Bush Pioneer. That doesn't make it a good idea.

So much of Nader's career has been built on reminding us of our common ties. It's not ok, he's argued, for companies to make unsafe cars, pollute our air, or pillage shared resources. Actions have consequences, he's pointed out with persistence and eloquence.

Now, he's taking the opposite tack, fixating on his own absolute right to do whatever he chooses, while branding those who've argued against his running as contemptuous censors, who  "want to block the American people from having more choices and voices." This argument would seem familiar coming from an Exxon executive. Coming from Ralph Nader, it marks a fundamental shift from an ethic of responsibility to one of damn the consequences, no matter how much populist precedent he tries to dress it up with. No wonder participants in right-wing websites, like FreeRepublic.org, have salivated over Nader's

Mr. Wasserman,

Nice piece: www.truthout.org/docs_04/021904I.shtml.

Though friends roll their eyes, I've never doubted for a moment in the past 2.5 yrs that GW Bush will be known as *the* Dot-Com President of the nation.

As things start to get more interesting, just remember:

ALL warfare is psychological warfare...There is no other kind. Denials of this assertion are exposed as debate about tactics.

Regards,
Paul
Chicago

The saga of Howard Dean is a cautionary tale about politics and the Internet. His campaign rode a big wave of cyberspace hype -- and then sank.

There are valid complaints to be made about Dean’s rough handling by major news outlets this winter. Sometimes the coverage was unfair. But what gained him media prominence in the first place was journalistic infatuation with his campaign’s successful use of the Internet for outreach and fund-raising.

Actually, Dean burst onto the nation’s front pages because of money. As far as political journalists were concerned, Dean came into his own as a presidential contender midway through 2003. In the second quarter of the year, he raised $7.5 million -- including $800,000 on a single dramatic day.

In sync with the aphorism that money is the mother’s milk of politics, the former Vermont governor seemed to have found a cash cow on the Internet. The ability to raise large sums from many online devotees caused the political press corps to sit up and take notice.

Countless news stories during the summer and fall chronicled the