And the blogs are no substitutes for fair and balanced journalism because they are 99% opinion and 1% new information of which .5% is actually useful.

I'm guessing that your use of this phrase is entirely unintentional.

Which makes it ridiculously ironic.

If a person who indulges in gluttony is a glutton, and a person who commits a felony is a felon, then God is an iron. -Spider Robinson

A lot of them are professionals and trained in the arts of lying propaganda. And a lot of those are paid by the likes of Bill Kristol.

When you are trained by an idiot it is hard to be really good at what you do.

It's fairly easy to baffle the unwashed masses with bullshit, it's considerably harder with the self selected group that is mostly here on Salon.

I've come to the conclusion that we here (and some other online sites) are the politically aware elite. It's a thought that terrifies me no end.

And even here I feel like Donald Sutherland's character at the end of _Invasion of the Bodysnatchers_, desperately trying to get someone, anyone to listen.

Maybe I'm an idealist, but I see a bit of the greatness and humanity of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt in both John and Elizabeth Edwards, and were he to become President, I genuinely believe Edwards would do his best to redistribute some of grossest transfers of wealth that have occurred in the past 25 years from the upper classes back to those of us suckers who have the misfortune of earning less than a million dollars a year.

Unless and until the war on the American people is ended then the slide toward totalitarianism will not halt. Edwards may slow that slide somewhat but he has no plank in his platform to end the war that has made "The Land of the Free" into the largest incarcerator of human beings on the planet.

I wonder how the Democratic candidates would answer the same question?

They all feel it necessary to talk about their "faith", it wouldn't surprise me at all to hear at least one or two waffle about evolution.

I'm sorry bucky, but that is not so..

There is a sizable contingent of theists who believe that fossils of extinct animals were put in the earth by God as a test of faith.

I'm disgusted enough with the Democrats to put very little past them.

They routinely and almost to a man vote for incredibly important policy based on nothing more than fantasy, fantasy that has a great deal of evidence to show that is totally incorrect.

The thing that could save him and us if he were to become president is his wife Michelle. She is his rock and should be able to guide him on the right path as she has done since she met him. She is the real deal. That is what Iowa voters have learned and why I think he will prevail there. Of course, the voters also know that Edward’s wife is the real deal.

I'm sure that a lengthy prison term would have improved young Barack's prospects in the world immensely. I'm glad to see that he advocates that treatment for others who are in the same situation he was then.

I have a loved one doing a lengthy prison term for a nonviolent "drug crime" right now.

If and when he gets out he will never be able to get a job beyond laborer, if that.

A felony drug conviction makes you into an untouchable in today's society.

If Barack were an ex con doing day labor?

That is what Obama the candidate wishes on Obama the teen/young adult.

Barack claims to be a man of faith and yet he apparently has no clue that the sin Jesus the Christ most often and vociferously denounced was that of hypocrisy.

I think his "faith" is about as thick as the coating on an M&M.

Don't tell me you're a Christian, let me figure it out.

The main one being that your support of a government strong enough to do your "ever so liberal" bidding is also strong enough to wring all our necks.

You are going to get a powerful government whether you like it or not. I can't think of a single example of government power being permanently reduced without some sort of calamitous event.

One of my father's favorite sayings was "There is nothing more permanent than a temporary tax". I've come to see his wisdom as I grow older.

Do you honestly think the government of the CSA would have been any less freedom destroying than that of the USA had the CSA survived to this day?

Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. ...The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive. -Frank Herbert

This white nigger says fuck them all.

Nigga please.. ;->

Tell us something we don't already know..

And seeking solace in drugs or addictions only keeps the renters inside.

People have always used drugs or other means of altering consciousness.

Fasting and running are two ways to alter consciousness without using external chemical means. Under stress the body produces its own drugs, endorphins, which are endogenous opioid biochemical compounds.

Ever wonder why people can't just be satisfied with alcohol as a recreational drug?

Why doesn't everyone enjoy an alcohol buzz?

Why do ADHD children react to Ritalin by calming down? Ritalin is actually a stimulant not all that different than meth.