Jimmyt, you say your president can "stack the supreme court." That should be enough to put a doubt in your mind about those checks and balances you're so sanguine about.

By the same token, many still take the USA's free press for granted, and there was indeed a time when its press was one of the country's great strengths. Not any more. The press is bellicose, partisan and demeaned by sycophantic self-censorship. Remember how the Abu Ghraib scandal emerged into the public domain, no thanks to CBS which had the story but didn't run it on the grounds that to do so would have been unpatriotic?

Face it, jimmyt, if Kerry and Bush are anything to go by, the US has a massive problem attracting competent people to run for its highest office. My contempt for Tony Blair is close to pathological, but even he could dance rings round Bush in any argument, on any subject.

If you saw the first head-to-head debate (I had the misfortune to see it in full at last, a couple of days ago) you surely must have marvelled at just how stupendously, impossibly, risibly bad Bush was. If you still respect him after that, then I suspect it was not so much potty training you went through at school as brainwashing. Try to shake off the indoctrination and start to think for yourself.