Pat,

First, about the primaries and the nine dems - primary politics always play to the base because only the most loyal and hard core voters tend to vote at this early stage. Usually primary politics entail attracting the base and then after the nominee is selected a shift back to the middle. So that is one of the reasons why so many attacks are being aimed towards Shrub.

But I agree with you, if the dems don't offer hope, solutions and alternatives to Shrub, it will probably be another four more years.

As for other countries and their opinion of our flag waving - I think they have a reason to be fed up with it and our claim of hyper-patriotism. For an example of this, recall the past couple of Olympic games. We need to have a little bit of humbleness and quit being so 'in your face' with our nationalism.

And we also need to recall what France did for us in the early years of our country. Hell, if not for the French, the US would not be what it is today. How else did we defeat the British back then? And who helped us through all the other wars in our early creation? It was France.

As for this Reagan movie - no one has yet seen the thing except for clips and an unfinished script (as I said earlier, I saw a clip and it looked terrible) but two of the things those on the right complained about - Nancy and the astrologers and Reagan and his AIDS issues - were basically correct. And I seem to recall reading something years ago about Reagan slapping his daughter.

As for burning the flag and treason - here is a story from my military days. When one joins the military an oath is taken to defend the Constitution. The Supreme Court has ruled burning the flag is protected speech, whether one likes it or not. While in the army, for a philosophical discussion, I would ask soldiers what they would do if someone set a flag on fire in front of them. Of course, most of the replies were, "I' D KICK THEIR ASS!" Then I would remind them of their oath and to most of them that oath didn't matter.

For what it is worth, I believe that a country and its freedoms and liberties are much stronger when the burning of a flag does not threaten them and it shows their strengths by recognizing such behavior as protected speech.

(On a side note of irony - isn't it so odd that while many people feel so strongly about the burning of the US flag, but not too long ago the killing of the American Bald Eagle, a living and breathing symbol of America, was an acceptable practice).