It is amazing and amusing to see some supposedly "liberal" pundits belittling Clinton's confrontation with Wallace. I found Mr. Clinton's responses actually rather restrained, considering the, yes, smirking Mr. Wallace's efforts at performing his obviously assigned job of re-writing history.

While, in the 1990's, I was not particularly a Clinton fan, I am cursed with a memory of some of those events, and I distinctly recall vitriolic efforts by Republicans, mired in their Monica Lewinsky gossip, to prevent any significant efforts by Clinton to attack bin Laden, and to respond effectively to various foreign crises in Mogadishu as well as in the Balkans. The current effort by Republicans and the Murdoch-dominated media to re-write history, blaming Clinton for failing to go after Al Qaeda, is utter nonsense, indeed, malicious nonsense.

Mr. Bush et al emphatically dismissed anything the Clinton Administration had been doing, whether it was responding to terrorism or negotiating with North Korea, or reducing the deficit; such efforts were tainted by being associated with Clinton. If anyone is responsible for allowing 9/11 to happen, if has to be Bush, Rumsfeld, and Cheney. Their frantic efforts to palm off blame says it all: the neocons know in their hearts the guilt is theirs and, like the spoiled little adolescent rich kids they are, they seek to escape retribution.

Several headlines and comments by pundits indicate the Foley "tragedy" might harm the Republican's efforts to retain control of the house, as if that is what it's all about. Talk about utter narcissism! Is that the main point of the scandal? Many commentators appear to think so, including the Washington Post.

The scandal is about our children and what a piss poor job we do of protecting them.

It is also about the fact that the greedy, power-focused Republican leadership at every level was concerned about not only protecting their own dirty men, but also not offending Congressman Foley, the predator himself--- why? Because Mr. Foley's very wealhty constituents gave incredible amounts of money to the Republican Party and Republican candidates through the auspices of Mr. Foley. Don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

In a crazy kind of way I believe that the selection of Sarah Palin (a white woman) releases racist voters to vote for McCain-Palin and not for Obama-Biden. These voters were too prejudiced to vote for Obama, but could not admit the reason out loud, and now they can vote for a woman and thus show that they really are not prejudiced.... "See, I'm voting for a woman, so I'm obviously not a bigot." Of course, that she is Caucasian and a gun-toting huntress makes it even better.

If McCain "takes his gloves off" in the upcoming debate, going on the attack during the debate with his distortions, Obama absolutely must not ignore him. This will be a test of strength, and I would not put it past McCain to hurl something utterly off the wall and shockingly despiccable, hoping to throw Obama off balance. If Obama does not turn calmly to McCain, tell him he should be ashamed of himself to stoop so low, and that McCain knows the charge is false, in other words, if Obama does not show presidential leadership combined with righteous but restrained anger, then he will have lost.

McCain is desperate for a game-changer, and pulling a personal foul of monumental proportions is exactly his style---- and Bush-Rove's style, too, so expect it to happen.

It strikes me that a thorough investigation on the matter of torture should proceed even if Bush issues pardons, the reason being that we must learn what happened and who bears the ultimate responsibilities. Even if Bush issues pardons, do these not apply only to the American court system? Once the full truth is exposed, what is to prevent other countries from indicting those responsbile and, if another country can catch the offenders, trying them? Spain has quite a record of doing exactly this, for example. Thus, the guilty parties might find themselves restricted to American soil in the future; the US would be their jail, which they could not leave without putting themselves in peril. Perhaps another power will exercise selective rendition on them for a change, kidnap them out of their gated communities and try them overseas.

Is not Steele the doofus who put out a flyer in African American neighborhoods when he was running (I think for lieutenant governor) that pretended he was a Democrat? Might have worked, but he was caught. So he really is a liar and a cheat, a dishonest man. Just your typical Republican pol.

While it's true in one way, in another, no. There are derogatory, sexually-oriented terms relating to men, like "boy toy," but they are so rarely used they don't have the gut-punching history of the anti-female words. If we put our minds to work, I am sure we could invent some truly nasty ones--- but do we want to go there? Would shouting new invective add to the discussion? Hmmm. Maybe.

While Ahmadinejad bears a certain resemblance to Dubya Bush (and we can discuss stolen elections separately), what strikes me about many recent elections around the world is that they are all similar in that the urban-based desire for modern change runs up against a solid wall of rural refusal, a refusal usually couched in religious terms. The old does not want to give away to the new, and will do whatever it takes to abort the birth.

Established elites around the world are fighting back, and they are using the huge conservative base in whatever country is currently on the boil, whether the base realizes they are being used or not, to stifle "change." Sometimes they attempt to co-opt the change, take over the movement and turn it to the benefit of the embedded elites, and sometimes they just kill it.

There is far more similarity between Ahmadinejad with his belligerant religiosity and George W. Bush with his belligerant religiosity than either realizes, because both are puppets.