I'll take your word for that - I'm not well versed in the effects of drugs.
I pop in to sci.electronics.design from time to time. On-topic subjects are sometimes of interest, and off-topic threads can be entertaining, but the huge noise-to-signal ratio drives me out again after a few days.
Personally, I haven't figured out whether Bush is a puppet controlled by self-serving Neocons (and/or others), or he really is in control himself. If he is a puppet, you really have to wonder how anyone that stupid, even in the American political system, could rise to that position. On the other hand, when he is caught on his own without his script writers and minders, he appears so lost and clueless that there is no way Bush himself is the mastermind behind the Bush machine. There's a saying, "Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity", but I am in two minds as to whether it applies here.
Not that being a puppet is necessarily a bad idea for a president - at least, compared to being wilful but stupid - depending on the people pulling the strings. Regan was to a large extent a puppet figurehead (what do you expect if you vote in an actor?), but wasn't all bad.
I still don't see how my opinion of Bush "drips from my previous posts". You marked me down as a Bush hater, and degenerated to laughable insults, after a single one-line post. But I guess it drips more than enough from this post.
Incidentally, Rob Roy was not a politician - he was a farmer turned outlaw. If you want to pick on a Scottish politician, Tony Blair would be a better bet.
And Quisling arguably acted in what he genuinely thought was the country's best interest. He believed Hitler would win, and that cooperation would limit the damage to Norway and Norwegians, while resistance was ultimately futile and would make matters worse. History is written by the winners, and in this case it was not Hitler, Quisling, and friends.
But in general I agree - there are few politicians that are capable of doing a good job, and genuinely aim to do the best for their country. Some politicians have brains, and some have a heart - there are not many with both, but the USA seems to have an unfair proportion of those with neither.
I'm not *totally* biased - I am cynical and derisive towards both American parties and their leaders. Yes, I think Kerry would have been a better choice. Not a good choice, and probably not the best choice among the Democratic candidates, but better than Bush none the less. Of course, I can't prove it - but Bush's continuous record of lies, abuse of the American people and their hopes and fears, the destruction of the American economy, the on-going attempts of destruction of American democracy, the destruction of Iraq, the destruction of America's image around the world, the pandering to bin Laden's dream - the list goes on. It's hard to see how Kerry, or anyone else, could have been worse.
American media has always had a sheep mentality. They follow each other blindly. For most of the past five years, the mainstream media has followed the Bush party line on almost everything, with a total disregard for any concept of "truth" or "objectivity", for fear of being branded "unpatriotic" and therefore "terrorist sympathisers". Now, somehow, it has become possible to criticise Bush, and everyone is doing it.
Politics is almost circular - there is very little practical difference between extreme left and extreme right, it's the "extreme" that becomes most relevant. The extreme left and the extreme right will blame different groups for their countries ills, but it ends up much the same for the majority of people.
I guess you don't get much real information about Europe there in the USA. Your media has the attitude "out of America, out of mind".
A great thing about Europe is its diversity - for example, France's current problems are not mirrored outside the country, and social democracy works fine here in Norway (see the UN's list of the best countries to live in).
David