As long as you put "America" in quotation marks, I'd agree with you, notorbit. But the America that Bush and Cheney were defending, and enriching, is not my America. Their America is the America of mega-corporations: not my America. Their America is the America of Brown and Root: not my America. Their America is one where "sport" is considered to be shooting cage-raised quail: not my America. Their America is one where the rich get richer, and the poor get creationism instead of science in their classrooms: not my America.

And I don't understand your qualms about torturing children. The Gestapo, especially, loved this technique: capture a suspected Resistance worker, drag his or her child in, torture until the suspect talks. What's different about that then torturing the suspect himself or herself? Why draw the line anywhere? After all, we're right; that justifies everything, right?

And it works like this:

1) We're right.

2) So we can torture. It's okay, because we're right (otherwise, it would be wrong).

3) We don't torture for fun. We torture for information.

4) This information is vital. It's what allows us to torture.

5) (here comes the extrapolation) But the guy won't talk! He's tough! (Why, we can waterboard him over a hundred times--and it's just no good!).

6) What else can we do? We have to make him talk! It's vital!

7) We can torture him more. Bring on the thumbscrews!

8) He still won't talk! He's really tough.

9) Maybe he's just tough for himself. Would he be tough if it were his wife being tortured? (Real techniques, used by the Gestapo).

10) We can't do that! She's innocent!

11) But if we sacrifice just one innocent life....torture just one innocent person...why, we can save hundreds! How can we not do this?

Rinse and repeat. Pretty soon, you're justifying torturing six month old kids with hot irons. After all, how can you now? It's vital!

This is what's called a "slippery slope." Once you start going down, there's nothing to stop you. You've thrown away all your principles that might stop you to begin with.

But we're right! And it's vital!

So why would you possibly stop?

The media knows things about the world and holds them back from the public at large?

Really?

It seems to me that the function of the media in the US--and the reason why "the media" is quickly dying--is because they have seen their role as censor rather than as publisher.

I'm not talking about whether Crist is gay--I mean, outside of the Rabid Right, who cares? I'm talking about good public policy, about the habit of the media of taking established fact and rendering it as mere opinion (cf: climate change, torture), about the fact that the media is simply complicit in helping to keep the status quo. That the media won't ask a single hard question in an interview (unless the person is already unpopular); that the media "embeds" itself in an army and then issues rah-rah reports on the killing.

Why do you think you're all worrying about your jobs? It's because, at last, the American public sees you as utterly dispensable.

You serve no important function. You do nothing worthwhile. We wish you had; perhaps hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and the honor of the United States would not be buried today if you had done jobs worth paying you for.

Publishing the press releases of the powerful is nothing to be proud of. And we won't pay you for it, either.

The resident Salon wingnut begins with lies ("I wish I could answer them all, but there is only so much bandwidth available"), alleges the American people are too stupid to know the truth (the media "lied" to them; "distortions of his presidential record put forward by the Democrats and promulgated by the media"), can be heard whistling past the graveyard ("America remains a center-right country."), and then invokes that same media as painting a clueless bigot as an American hero ("so many people rose to the defense of Miss California, Carrie Prejean, after she stated her opposition to same-sex marriage in the Miss USA pageant. She may have lost the crown, but I think she won the country.").

This series of lies and deliberate distortions sickens me, as the Republican conservatives sickened the entire country. They have spent some three trillion on the war in Iraq (direct and indirect costs); they have killed hundreds of thousands; they have beggared the county (one of the biggest transfers in wealth--from the middle-class to the rich--in history).

It's time to level war crimes against these people, as well as crimes of criminal incompetence and neglect. It's time to let them know that the real American people are sick of their insipid pieties, their laughable values, their bigotry and foolishness.

These people are not Americans. I don't know what they are--they belong to no nation--but they're not us.

It's time to put our hands on them and try them--fairly--while there's still time--before they flee this country to safer havens.

Is there any kind of negative remark concerning Sotomayor which RT would not construe as sexist?

Just wondering.

SS:

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Eh, I'm no fan of abortion (although I am a fan of abortion rights), but what really bothers me about Keyes and his ilk is that while abortion is wrong, for them, war and capital punishment are just A-OK.

I'd have a sliver of respect for this man if he'd seen fit to protest the unjust war of Iraq or the many state-sanctioned deaths in prisons across this country. But--no seamless garment here!

Just whitened sepulchers.