have been dropped because the military prosecutor assigned by the kangaroo court said the "trials were unfair because [his side] was not disclosing exculpatory evidence to the defense". The Pentagon said he will be replaced and detainee lawyers are claiming the military has informed them the charges will be reinstated but not until after the election. Boing, boing, boing, boing, goes the kangaroo tribunals. Our country really is in a sad state of affairs and I'm seriously starting to doubt whether an Obama administration will have much luck pointing us in a new direction even if it wanted to. Too many institutional players who have a vested interest in the status quo and too many in Dem leadership who aren't even remotely sympathetic to progressive economic ideas, progressive military ideas, progressive ideas on an Israel/Palestine solution, progressive ideas on Iran . . . they toss the lefties a bone with support for gay marriage (sometimes) and the ocassional "stimulus" buy off but that's about it . . . maybe a little proworker legislation that is instantly gutted by the pro corporatist lawyers the minute passed and further legitimized by a stacked DOL (oxymoron if ever there was one).

the proper insult is either bag o' douche, douche nozzle, or just douche. Why it's an insult to equate someone with a largely unnecessary feminine hygiene product is beyond me. Must flow from associations with the vagina in that it is apparently pejorative to call a man a "pus*ie" which makes no sense to me either. Let's have a show of hands who thinks women are tougher, have more endurance, and quite commonly pass newborns, equal in relative size and weight to bowling balls, through their cervix and vagina.

I for one have never deluded myself into believing I'm tougher or have a higher tolerance for pain than any woman who has given birth. That either of the supposed insults has any traction in this society is only proof positive that our childrens aint learnin and deyz know little about da female anatomy.

I personally think woman are pretty near perfect and the rest of life is mostly bullshit. But that's just me. They've got a few flaws here and there but nothing major. I know it's clearly sexist to give women any sort of props as human beings based solely on gender, but this here's the toobz and I'm allowed to make statements that don't mean or amount to anything. Sort of like Shooter and Elephantman.

You can all put your hands down now . . .except Shooter and Elephantman because they're so detached from reality they probably didn't raise their hands.

while I tend to agree that Gen. Powell's life is marked more by his lack of character than character, I still don't see why we can't, as Glenn said yesterday, praise the good act and continue to call attention to the bad. Seems to me this tendency to expect purity of anyone, particularly a politician, is a fool's errand. We push and prod and pull and cajole and point out hypocrisy and state the facts and hope people can be persuaded. Short of that there's only one other option that sometimes brings real change and it involves violence and I'm not really on board with that. Yet.

Gen. Powell's scorecard is something like this:

Principaled Powell: 1

Unprincipaled Powell: 63

Could it effectively achieve any end other than demonstrating political purity for Sen. Obama to renounce Powell's endorsement as ms/mr adnoto suggests? Highly speculative that it could and also highly doubtful that it would--in this country anyway.

Most Americans can't conceive that "our military leaders" could do a thing except with the best of intentions and that if they did they did so at the behest of misguided or misinformed "political leaders" who only seek to protect us from the very scary brown people in the world and in our neighborhoods.

Blindly following orders and CYA is America's culture. Admitting we were wrong and making amends is not. Have you ever worked for a big company and taken a good hard look at the people in management. Yesmen, suckups, and borderline if not outright sociopaths. They come from somewhere don't they. I'd suggest they are us. All of us. Well not me of course but that's why I haven't progressed very far in the business community. Real bad habit of telling the truth as I see it when asked and a real inability to sugar coat it when I do. That and having more empathy for my subordinates than my so called superiors means I generally side with the side my bread isn't buttered on.