Wow, it's so great to see Newt all over the TV screens again because only a scant decade ago he was Einstein and Cary Grant and Sgt Rock combined for America!!

That is, except his fellow Republicans threw him out of power because of all his disastrous political screw-ups and every poll showed him to be a really unpopular fringe nut case with Americans. And also his history dissertation on the Congo was pretty damn mediocre.

But other than that, everybody's just been waiting eagerly for Newt's return!!!

Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, George Washington et al obviously thought that citizens should entirely trust invisible secret sources telling them that their government should go to war with foreign countries.

What kind of crazy notion of citizenship would have citizens actually demanding some degree of observable proof of charges before supporting their politicians' desires for wars?

The ABC guy is right. A real good American citizen doesn't need all that fancy pants ivory tower pointy-head stuff to make decisions.

They just need to tell us how trusted they all are, and then our only decision is how strongly to support them.

That's why in the leadup to this Iraq war, all of the significant evidence was based on secret official sources who never revealed their evidence to us. And the good media like ABC did their job and played their trusted role to present us with those government claims about there being lots of secret evidence we couldn't see.

Unfortunately Republicans do not see any hypocrisy between screaming about NANCY PELOSI going to Syria, and ANY Republican going to ANY country in ANY capacity.

That's because they simply assume that everyone agrees with their conspiracist paranoia: Republicans are by nature patriotic and good for America, and Democrats are by nature treasonous and will serve to undermine the US of A.

So they see no contradiction. If Republican Congressmen go to Syria, they'll obviously put on cowboy hats, shove Assad down in his chair and slap him around while they sing Yankee Doodle Dandy, like Real Men would. If Nancy Pelosi goes to Syria, she's obviously going to bow down and promise to make California the first American State of the New Jihad Caliphate. That's how they see the world.

Republican politicians are the same people who reject any objective measurements on who is good or bad for U.S. and world security, since they would fail any such test.

A century ago people understood that it mattered who owned the newspapers, and what their interests were.

The bosses had their newspapers. The unions had theirs. The socialists and the isolationists had theirs. Ethnic communities had theirs. All these outsold the bosses' papers. The union and socialist newspapers alone far outsold the bosses' papers.

But costs went up, and advertising meant that subscriptions became less and less important as funding, and not surprisingly, advertising all went to the bosses' papers, not the union papers, not the socialist papers.

Now, all that's left is the bosses' papers. And we act surprised year after year that somehow the bosses' papers act like the bosses' papers.

Why right wingers keep screaming that 'Clinton thought Iraq had WMD!' I don't know.

Here's the difference: Clinton, whatever he was thinking about WMD, DID NOT INVADE & OCCUPY IRAQ.

Bush Jr. did.

For most people, that's a significant difference.

Clinton could have been convinced that the Martians were invading Earth via the sands of Iraq. But he didn't therefore make the stupid, idiotic, dangerous, foolish decision to invade & occupy Iraq.

Bush Jr. did. Bush Jr. invaded & occupied Iraq. Clinton didn't.

Okay, do we need to repeat this? Bush Jr. was the one who made the stupid, idiotic, costly, dangerous and foolish decision to invade & occupy Iraq. Bush Jr. Not Clinton. Bush Jr.