Fact: National exit polling in 2004 showed Kerry winning by a substantial 3-5% of the popular vote.

Fact: The '04 Ohio ballot results were manipulated. Several Ohio GOP election officials have been convicted in a court of law of "fixing" the recounts demanded by the Green and Libertarian Parties.

Rational inference #1: John Kerry was elected president in 2004, but the election was stolen by widespread election fraud (the Democrats, of course, quietly acquiesced -- not wanting to look like "sore losers").

Rational inference #2: In the 2006 mid-terms, Rove & Co. underestimated citizen outrage and failed to fix the election by enough bogus votes. The Republicans will probably not repeat that mistake in 2008.

Lesson learned by Democrats: None. Roll-out those electronic voting machines again.

If only we could install a secular strong-man who could limit the influence of the Iranians and Al Qaeda while maintaining the national unity of the three major Iraqi ethnic groups.

Maybe like, uh, what was his name? Had a big moustache...

We rubes just don't get the big picture. The quarter century of Republican candidates campaigning on nothing but tax cuts is really their long-term solution to illegal immigration.

Since the motive for all those Mexicans crossing the border is a better life for them and their families, the Republicans have wisely decided to remake America into a dysfunctional, debt-ridden, oligarchical kleptocracy like Mexico.

Problem solved. Mexicans won't cross the border when things are just as bad here as they are back home.

Now all we new American peasants have to do is find a way to make it into Canada, where health care is free, social services are generous, and bridges don't collapse.

Of course, once enough Americans become Canadian citizens, some enterprizing Canadian politician will probably come-up with a sure-fire crowd-pleaser about taxes being "your money" and campaign on a pledge of "no new taxes."

How much scholarship is required to understand that:

a) People don't like it -- and tend to resent it to the point armed resistance -- when their country is invaded by foreigners.

b) People don't like it -- and tend to resent it to the point armed resistance -- when a foreign power influences the internal affairs of their country against their own interests.

c) Even third parties in countries not directly affected tend to get outraged at instances of (a) and (b).

It's those pesky notions of nationalism and justice that no amount of "scholarship" (or day I say it, "seriousness") can overcome.

Assuming that 2009 brings a new administration, the Truth of the Bush regime will gradually ooze out.

Like Powell has already experienced, everybody associated with that sociopathic cabal will be permanently tainted.

Only the willfully naive can dispute the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 were stolen by the Busheviks.

When we quietly acquiesce to the loss of our democracy, the loss of our freedoms will be inevitable.

And once our freedoms have been lost, can the reign of the torturers be far behind?

Already, evil men with innocent blood on their hands occupy high positions in the Bush regime and in Bush's military high command. They are being groomed for higher office.

Meanwhile, the democratic opposition is rudderless and pathetically ineffectual, and our corporate media is busy "playing dumb."

Welcome to a 21st century rerun of the late Weimar Republic.

When will Bush demand (in the interest of fighting terror, of course) that ultimate tool from the Dictators' Tool Kit:

President-for-life status.

Naturally the 25 percenters, the Republicans in Congress, Fox News, right-wing pundits and talk-show hosts, etc., would stiff-arm salute the idea. The only question is whether the Democrats would utter any feeble squeaks of protest before capitulating.

Here's the definition of "progress" in Operation Iraqi Freedom: Reversing the previous policy of fighting the Sunni "insurgents," we are now arming them -- preparing them to do battle with the Shiite government we installed (remember that purple-finger exercize?).

A Shiite government influenced by Iran? Who could have predicted?

If the Iraqis begin killing more of each other, maybe they will begin killing fewer of us. In the metrics of fiasco, that's progress.

These "serious" foreign policy "scholars" reaffirm the old axiom:

In war, the first casualty is the truth.

Kudos to Glenn for showing the corporate "news" hacks how real journalism is done. It was the mutation of our media watchdogs into lapdogs that allowed the Iraq debacle to occur.

Another element of Alaska's corrupt Republican establishment is the 2004 election results: the precinct-by-precinct numbers simply don't tally with the official state totals.

Alaska Democrats have been trying to get their hands on the raw election data since 2004, but Republican state election officials have been doing their best to hide the raw data, saying the e-voting machine data are "trade secrets."

The Alaska ballot irregularities are just the tip of the iceberg for the national Republican election theft of 2004.

"Being wrong is not lying. Bush's sixteen words were true then and are true now, along with the CIA interpretation of Wilson's report as supportive of Iraq's attempt to buy yellowcake. O'Hanlon's observations about the universality of the case for invasion is still true. In the end the ultimate responsibility for all this lies with Saddam."

And Hitler invaded Poland because of Polish military incursions into Germany.

Rove may soon be gone, and he may be political poison to other campaigns, but that doesn't matter.

What does matter is that through Rove's machinations, the federal judiciary has been compromised for at least another generation by radical, absolutist, pro-corporate judges eager to put politics above now quaint notions like "law" and "justice."