Mulligan; reading your posts, I assume you're in the states where dispatch is an integral part of the operation. Here in euroland, our dispatchers are not trained to the same degree, so all the pressure is on us. On the other hand, as flight crew, no one else enters into our decision process. Yes there are commercial pressures take as little fuel as possible, but unlike in the USA, no one else apart from flight crew are qualified to input into that decision making process.
Dispatch has it's benefits, but so does not having one. Slightly archaic, but there are two phrases that I regularly hear. 1) BITFC and 2) lets do some of that piloting s**t that we're paid to do.