"Limbaugh as a "draft-avoiding, illegal-pill-addicted and multiple-divorced (man) burdened with one of the most decadent and degraded lives of any public figure anywhere."

Not only is Glenn right that it isn't hypocritical to refuse to unilaterally disarm, there's also the fact that what he said about Limbaugh has the virtue of being TRUE. Those are all facts, not mere insults. If the shoe fits, wear it you fat-headed drug-addicted idiot.

And that's what's completely different between the kind of thing Glenn did and what the Republicans always do: the Republicans are habitual liars and their caricatures of the last several Democratic presidential nominees have been based on vicious lies.

The reality is there's nothing wrong with personality-based politics per se. Its only when its FALSE personality-based politics and at the exclusion of honest policy-based politics -- aimed at the common good -- that it becomes bad.

Millspam said, "I love your reasoned arguments, but I know reasonable people that don't read you because they sense an almost immature anger in your writing. I sense this myself but tolerate it."

If you're not angry about what the extremist movement Republicans are doing to this country then you either just don't get it or there's something wrong with you. This entire line of thought is based on the completely and totally false idea that anger is always wrong.

No, it isn't. There are times when it is absolutely appropriate to be angry and I've never seen Glenn seem angry unless it was utterly appropriate.

As I commented earlier, there's nothing wrong with attack politics per se. In fact, I will go so far as to say that attack politics is good!

Presidential races address all the most important moral issues and one side is clearly in it for the personal gain of a privileged minority. People who are on the wrong side of torture, war, and promoting the General Welfare DESERVE to be attacked. Since they deserve it, it is only just to do so.

If you don't disagree with your opponent, then why are you running? If you won't criticize people who are on the evil side of torture, illegal wars based on lies, withholding medical care from those who need it, and the further enrichment of the already rich, then who will you criticize? This is doubly the case when the Republicans are actively out there attacking us. If our opponents were decent people whose held reasonable positions and honestly disagreed that would be one thing. But that is decidely NOT how it is.

No, attacks in politics are good. What's bad is LYING in the course of those attacks.

What a surprise: Mukasey -- the chosen AG of scumbags -- is himself a scumbag. I would have never guessed it before his confirmation when he would not call waterboarding a crime.

Once again the Democrats pussied out and helped legitimate their own enemies. We told them so.

I've been on the bus many, many times. I saw the Dead almost 100 times. And here is what I learned, combining the best of the mystical experiences I experienced under the influence of acid and shrooms and several years of grad school:

The brain is a physical mechanism that generates exprience. We know THAT this is true even if we don't know exactly how. If you shred somebody's brain you shred their experience. If you stimulate someone's brain electrically, you will generate certain experiences. If you add chemicals to someone's brain you alter their experience.

I've had many mystical experiences after ingetsing the right chemicals, i.e. the ones that the brain already has receptors for. You can reliably generate these experiences by that means. There is no reason to believe that these experiences are anything other than unusual experiences generated by unusual chemicals in the brain. You take the acid, you have the mystical experience. The acid wears off and the mystical experiences fade away. Obviously these experiences are the result of brain chemistry.

Hell I've done acid dozens of times and even I'm not crazy enough to think I'm accessing some other real reality. As Led Zeppelin said, "It's all a state of mind". Nothing more. And nothing less.

But the Ken Wilber's of the world market themselves -- not just as people who want to share interesting experiences -- but as gurus with the secret knowledge.

Well here's some secret knowledge for you: Once I had a mystical experience in which I learned that all the mystical experiences, including Ken Wilber's were simply states of consciousness generated by unusual chemicals. If you haven't had this experience you can't understand it.

Now prove that I am wrong and give me one good reason why my claim to secret knowledge is any less convincing than Wilber's.

"Any mystical experience you have while using LSD or other psychedelic substance isn't a legitimate one."

Longer reply: On one of my LSD-inspired mystical experiences I learned that LSD-inspired mystical experiences are in fact legitimate. If you haven't the same kind of mystical experience then you are not able to understand this dharma.

Shorter reply: How the hell would YOU know and who are you to tell me whether or not my experiences are legitimate?

Once you throw out science and logic and reason and posit some unverifiable alternative form of higher knowledge, then anything goes. At that point you're playing tennis without a net and every shot's a winner!