Over the past few decades, Rebublicans have succesfully appropriated words like "morality," "Christian," and, of course, "values" to describe their ideological mixture of greed, avarice, and bigotry. And it's worked for them, to the extent that millions of people have consistently voted against their own interests because they want to be with the party of "morality" and values." It's easy to blame the allegedly liberal media for going along with this (a headline in the New York Times yesterday, in fact, mentioned "values voters" in North Carolina, referring of course to anti-abortion and anti-gay voters), but equal blame should go to the idiocy of the democrats and progressives in being too damn postmodern and rational to fight fire with fire, no matter how badly they've gotten trounced for it. Much as I'd love to have a true separation of church and state, and a president who refuses to play the God card, it's simply not going to happen any time soon, and refusing to play the God game is going to continue to be a losing strategy. In this context, if Obama wants to evoke the progressive Christianity of Martin Luther King to counter the Christianity of Jerry Falwell and "Left Behind," all I can say is "it's about time!"

"He who exercises no forethought but makes light of his opponents is sure to be captured by them." Sun Tzu

"Because I love America ... I have to now stand aside"

I think that John Lennon prophesied Mitt Romney, around the time Romney's dad was (not) marching with King:

"He's a real nowhere man, sitting in his nowhere land

making all his nowhere plans for nobody"

But does "nationalizing" races, by internet or otherwise, necessarily benefit the extremes? In Pennsylvania, uber conservative Rick Santorum was replaced by moderate (to the point of crosssing the aisle on abortion) Bob Casey, largely owing to nationwide disgust with Santorum's virulently anti-gay remarks. The same might be said for Virginia, in which moderate Jim Webb beat right wing George Allen largely thanks to youtube.

John McCain is a confidence man to make P.T. Barnum proud. For years now, he's gone into his "maverick" act, usually with no real consequences (as when he lets out a lot of smoke and fire about torture and then votes in favor of it) then goes right back to being a reliable right winger. Of course the media enables him--that's probably because, in the era of Gingrich and Limbaugh, he's one of the few major Republicans who at least attempt to mask their disdain for other viewpoints. Much as I love Jon Stewart, he's played a huge part in this, most likely because McCain's just about the only significant Republican he can get on the show (and, yes, McCain, like most con men, has a great sense of humor). Now, of course, McCain's got a problem--how does he get the far right into his camp without exposing his con to the world? (My guess is that the media will help).

Full disclosure: I haven't read the whole interview, or even the whole first page, but I certainly read enough to know that this guy's a douchebag who, if he has anything intelligent to say, is more interested in selling books through being outrageous. Or perhaps he's not familiar with the way people "converse" on the internet (clue: they use words like "asshole" and "douchebag" when the subject is not actually nether regions of the body), or with the culture of right wing talk radio or cable news, or the ways in which these differ from the way people behaved in public in the past, in which case he's certainly not qualified to publish broad generalizations about our current culture. Oh, wait a second, one of the other letters said he admires Ann Coulter. Okay, so he's not oblivious, which means I'm back to thinking he's either an idiot or a fraud (like that skanky bitch he admires--note: another example of the language people commonly use on the web). The editors of Salon should be embarrassed for allowing this ridiculous huckster on the site.

"are there absolutely no qualifications for getting a newspaper column?"

The Inquirer's struggling for relevance, like many a daily newspaper these days. By giving a column to the most loathed man in Pennsylvania, they show that, well, the paper's still relevant enough to get its readers upset. So, that's Santorum's main qualification: being loathsome. And, certainly, with the flat out lie about the Democrats' huge shift to the left, he fills the bill. Anyone comparing the Dems now to the Dems forty years ago can see that, in fact, the party has turned to the right on pretty much every issue except for gay rights (which, for a pathetic little homophobe like Santorum, of course counts for a lot).

There are all kinds of legitimate attacks to be made on John McCain, particularly given the utter emptiness of his "straight-talking maverick" routine, but this is stupid. As to those who are seeing a connection to Guantanamo, etc., McCain's being born on a military base really isn't relevant, since his parents were American citizens. He's perfectly eligible to be a lousy right-wing president; deal with it.

McCain's problem, and the problem for anybody running as a Republican, is this: fundamentalist Christians are an essential part of the Republican base, and once you denounce one fundamentalist for being hateful and intolerant, where do you stop? A fundamentalist Christian is someone who, by definition, thinks a) that his or her God is wonderful, and b) that his or her God sentences anyone who doesn't worship Him in exactly the right way to eternal torture. In other words, fundamentalists think that it's wonderful that everyone except themselves is going to be tortured eternally; i.e. they hate everyone except themselves, no matter what they might say to the contrary. McCain knows this, and isn't about to open that Pandora's Box.