"The booing immediately drowned Kucinich out. He had committed a cardinal sin, demeaning the Democratic Party before a crowd that works countless unpaid hours a week to make the party stronger." Just like telling military families that the Iraq War is a disaster. But is it really better to tell them what they want to hear and hope everything works out in the end? How will such denial make the party stronger?

Either it is true that people don't vote because they don't perceive any difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, or it isn't true. If such people don't really exist, it's nothing to get exercised about. But if they do--and I would have thought it's a truism--then the Democratic Party needs to show them that it IS different, presumably through its actions. Those non-voters won't go away just because the candidate who pointed out their existence got booed. The booers' arrogant message is that it isn't up to the Democratic Party to earn people's votes; it's up to the electorate to vote solidly for the Democratic Party regardless of what it does, simply because it's not the Republican Party.

The bottom line is that the progressive bloggers (surely not all of them, to be fair) didn't want to hear Kucinich point out this fact because they themselves realize that the difference is far smaller than they'd like, and they got defensive. But what is their plan to increase that difference? Serve as enforcers and demand that progressives vote unanimously for the Democratic Party, then hope that it doesn't ignore them after they've served their purpose? (Hope over experience.)

What more do people like me want Hillary Clinton to do about her pro-Iraq War vote? Three little words: "I was wrong." Sure, she's afraid she'd look weak. But trust me, if she can't admit such an obvious mistake she's bound to look even weaker. (Remember the HAPPY DAYS episode where Fonzie said "Ralph, I was wrrrrrrrrrrrnnnnnggggg..."?)

"Freedom is the right to say 2+2=4"--George Orwell

Back in the 1950s, an earlier school of "liberal realists" like Arthur Schlesinger Jr. claimed to be asserting "the vital centre" but in practice enabled the anticommunist hawks on the far right, before themselves taking power and leading America straight into Vietnam. (If any group was discredited by the Vietnam War, it should have been them.) In his recent book, Peter Beinart treats them as triumphant!

With a little help from 20 million dead Russians. (Yeah, I know she was being ironic. Wasn't she?)

So your Netflix queue has 360 titles? My queue at Zip (a Canadian version of Netflix) is almost 500 titles long, not including dozens that haven't yet become available!

'Jonathan Kozol, author of "Letters to a Young Teacher," talks with Salon about why No Child Left Behind squelches learning and reading Rilke's sonnets to first graders'

So No Child Left Behind squelches reading Rilke's sonnets to first graders?

"I am tired of [Edwards].... He is angry." And we can't have an angry candidate, can we? (Just ask Howard Dean.)

IMHO Edwards has actually been too cautious. He needs to make bigger breaks with conventional Democratic wisdom.

What's made Dubya such a disastrous president isn't his betrayal of Reagan but his fanatical loyalty to Reaganism. If you want to know Reagan's ultimate legacy, look at the past dozen years and the misrule of Newt Gingrich, Tom Delay and George W. Bush. It's Reagan who gained and misused presidential power at a crucial time, and made all that possible.

For example, the greatest damage caused by the Iran-Contra scandals was to the rule of law in the United States. (Remember, NOBODY was punished. Oliver North didn't even have to do his community service!) The current lawlessness of so many people in this administration surely reflects a sense that they can get away with the same things Reagan got away with. And judging by Nancy Pelosi's insistence that impeachment is off the table (so reminiscent of 1987), maybe they can. But this time the Republican Party is already starting to pay a huge, belated price. If only they'd paid it 20 years ago!

"America's moral authority, more precious than gold, has been tarnished by torture and lies and the erosion of our liberties."

As if it hadn't already been well "tarnished" by Nagasaki, My Lai, the Chilean coup and the Contras.

Florida's real estate market went through a notorious bubble in the mid-1920s. (The Marx brothers made light of it in their first movie THE COCOANUTS.)

Your mention of Okubo Toshimichi yesterday got me reading all about Meiji-era Japanese leaders like Ito Hirobumi on Wikipedia. (That site's links that take you to related entries make it addictive!)

"Ignorantius."

Part of the reason Howard Dean lost the Iowa race in 2004 was that they dug up an interview in which he observed that Iowa has too big a share of clout in the nomination process. (Which it obviously does.)

What the United States really needs is a serious third party. (And I don't care what the Nader-haters say.)

In that movie, chess coach Laurence Fishburne says, "You're not playing to win, you're playing not to lose!"

How come it's up to the Armenians to engage in "serious self-examination" and not the Turkish people? Oh yeah, because Turkey has more power. (Just like Israel and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.)

As for Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright's disapproval, Christopher responded to Israel's 1993 carpet-bombing of Lebanon by saying it might promote the peace process (the Lebanese, like the Armenians, are acceptable victims), while Albright defended continuing Iraq sanctions, which killed 5000 children a month, as long as Saddam Hussein remained in power. They're in no position to preach!

It's past time for the United States government to stop putting realpolitik ahead of morality, and any step in that direction, no matter if it's inconvenient, has to be supported by genuine idealists.

Sorry, I forgot that idealism was the problem, not the solution.

When Schlesinger was in the Kennedy administration, didn't he write a memo promoting presidential deniability?