What is baffling is why it took you so long to arrive to the conclusion that Islam and the Muslim world don't pose an existential threat to the USA. Over 40,000 Americans are killed in road accidents each year, but if one told you that road accidents pose an existential threat to the US, you would justifiably dismiss him as an idiot. Maybe you should look inward in an attempt to figure out why you, and so many others, have so willingly fallen for that deadly and logic defying neocon propaganda.

A society that worships guns as much as ours is a warring society. A nation can't be so fixated on guns and equate any form of gun control with the absolute lose of civil liberties and not be a warring, militaristic nation. The frontier mentality seems to be a permanent feature in this nation's psychic. Look at the unprecedented popularity of NFL football in our society, more people than ever, and an ever increasing number of females, are absorbed in the adoration of an incredibly violent, warlike sport. It's all connected and related. Most Americans don't want to risk their lives participating in wars, but they seem very comfortable accepting the idea that the US must be involved in periodic wars and that the US has an inherent right to invade and occupy foreign lands.

The Blackwater fiasco is so much like a time warp. It remind me of the American mercenaries back in the 70's and 80's in Latin America. They would teach the local death squads how to wipe out campesino villages the way it had been done in Vietnam. The same type of violent and racist thugs that trained and participated in numerous massacres in Latin America seem to be employed in Iraq, out of control. It's a matter of time before they are turned by Cheney on the American people who oppose him.

The public must face the truth-we are not the good guys anymore. Our government is evil, and therefore the US, as a nation, governed by this particular government, is the problem. It is the US imperial meddling in the Islamic world that has caused the terrorist retaliation of 9/11. It's the blatantly criminal invasion of Iraq that has brought thousands of insurgents into Iraq. It's the the US conduct in Iraq, with 200,000 mercenaries running amok like the Waffen SS, accountable to no one that is causing people around the world to compare us to the Nazis. Unless the public realizes that at this point in our history we are the problem, not the solution, we are doomed as a democracy. It's extremely unlikely to happen, particularly with the utter collapse of the media. I bring up the matter of Blackwater conduct in Iraq to people, highly educated and certainly not republicans and I get a blank look of incomprehension and an indifferent shrug. It would have been nice to have some reason to optimistic, but unfortunately, it seems like things will get only worse in our rush toward total fascism.

Yes, Wide Stance is a stupid, hypocritical, extreme wingnut, but that's what we already have right now in the white house. Even a survivalist closet homosexual from the most stupid and crazy state in the union couldn't be as bad as Bush/Cheney.

A good friend of mine has been active in the ADL for the last few years. She had been concerned for years by the gradual shift by the ADL toward the Right. She explained to me that Abe Foxman is an ardent and passionate supporter of the Israeli Likud party and its ideology. Foxman will never condemn any supporter of Israel and Likud. Since the neocons have such close ties to Likud and since Fox is the mouthpiece for the neocons ideology, Foxman is sure to always be very silent regarding the extreme nonsense expressed by the likes of O'reilly and his ilk.

Foxman is a holocaust survivor with an extremely profound emotional identification with Israel. In many ways he is Joe Lieberman alter ego. Hate crimes and hate speech committed in the US are secondary to him. Israel always comes first and he would never condemn hate speech expressed by those he perceives as friendly to Israel nor would he ever condemn hate speech aimed at those he perceives as Israel's enemies. Greenwald is just not going to get the ADL to condemn anybody from the O'Reilly, Malkin, Mark Levin side unless they suddenly started condemning Israel.

Not me, but a close friend. She became involved with the ADL because as a progressive who believed in the original stated mission of combating defamation against Jewish people, she was disturbed by the politicization of the ADL under Foxman and the clear right wing direction the ADL was moving to. Her conclusion that the top down undeclared policy is Israel right or wrong. Foxman identifies ideologically with the Likud and he will prevent the ADL from antagonizing anybody perceived to be friendly to Israel and particularly to the Likud. This pretty much precludes any ADL condemnation of Fox, neocons and most Republicans. Understood in that context, the ADL's silence regarding Fox and right-wing talk radio shouldn't be surprising to anyone and as long as Abe Foxman is running that show, nothing is going to change.