You wake up one morning and your country is under attack by a vastly superior military power.

Your police forces are disbanded and all civil protections are gone. Rioting and looting is everywhere. Your national treasures are looted. Innocent civilians are killed. The attackers imprison and torture people suspected of resisting the invasion. An entire nation is driven into hell.

And the president of the attacking country proudly stands on an aircraft carrier proclaiming that the war is won, "Mission Accomplished" is displayed on a huge banner in the background.

And the bottom line is this: The invasion was a mistake. Faulty, or made up, intelligence promised that Saddam had active WMD but none were found. So, instead of admitting to a horrible mistake, the invaders changed the rationale for the death and destruction over and over again.

I wouldn't be surprised if a substantial number of Iraqis consider the Show Thrower a national hero.

The attacks that occurred on 9/11 drove us to believe that any action against our enemies was justified.

To hell with the Geneva Convention and to hell with our democratic ideals. This is war, folks, and any means justifies the ends.

We failed the true test of a civilized and democratic society. Now, we can see more clearly how the German civilian population was cowed into ignoring (or accepting) the genocide of the Jews during WWII.

Many folks would say that to compare the two events is unfair. Millions of tortured and murdered is not the same as the crimes committed by our government, but that misses the point.

The point is that a line was crossed. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others suspended civil protections and laws in the belief that such action was justified. This is, and was, the same mindset that drove Hitler and countless other dictators throughout history.

I take it to mean that these deaths would not have occurred if not for the invasion of Iraq by the USA.

Has to fail. We know that based upon hard facts made obvious during his entire term.

So why does anyone think that this bailout (or whatever the hell it is) will be any different?

During the past eight years, Republican majorities in Congress and a Republican White House have driven the American economy to its knees, engaged us in an unecessary war, destroyed American credibility throughout the world, fostered increased terrorism, gutted environmental protections, employed unqualified Republicans in key cabinet and departmental positions, rendered financial oversight useless, and promoted religious belief over science and common-sense. The wreckage is obvious to anyone with a working brain.

This is the legacy of the Republican majority, and the public is enraged almost to the point of rebellion.

are America's future Brownshirts. If we do not prosecute today we'll be very sorry tomorrow.

and get down on your knees and pray to it. Or pray to a tree, or pray to your dog, or pray to the clouds, or pray to a pipe organ.

But whatever you do, don't think for yourselves. Better to rely upon priests, preachers, holy rollers, shamans, ministers to do your thinking for you.

Please, dear God, keep the religionists out of Washington. Their appearance does nothing except to divide and inflame us.

"Probably nothing".

OK. So let's leave it there until all has been investigated.

"Obasma" should be "Obama".

that has not had, at some point in their political career, contact with entities or persons that would later prove to be an embarassment?

These people have not been living in a monastery. They have been rubbing noses with people from all backgrounds and with many agendas.

Any politician that reaches the presidency has thousands, of communications that occurred during their political career. Are we going to engage in conjecture about every communication that "seems to be" or "could be" or "might be" suspicious? If we are, perhaps we should all subscribe to the lowest form of "journalism" as practiced by blowhards like Limbaugh, Hannity and that crowd.

This is not Obama's scandal. It belongs to Blagojevich. Let's focus on the real issues affecting us as a nation, not this petty crap that will be handled locally in Illinois.

States which have Signed but not yet Ratified the UN Convention Against Torture, as of 1997:

Belgium

Bolivia

Costa Rica

Cuba

Dominican Republic

Gabon

Gambia

Iceland

Indonesia

Morocco

Nicaragua

Nigeria

Sierra Leone

Sudan

United States of America

Bush cannot understand the difference bewtween upholding the Constitution and protecting the people. If, in his mind, it is one and the same then we have a supremely unqualified idiot as president, and an equally supremely unqualified idiot as our vice-president.

"Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage."

-Author unknown.

We'd better wake up and smell the coffee. America is showing signs of systemic decline and our present "leadership" is complicit to a large extent.

If all speculative reporting and reporting quoting unsubstantiated sources and reporting repeating other's speculative reports and rumor and innuendo and opinion based upon personal bias or opinion based upon unsubstantiated reporting was eliminated the entire news industry would be reduced by a very heavy percentage.

News has morphed into entertainment. The medium becomes the message and a mindless public will continue to gobble it up.

The style of delivery on Fox News reminds me of the leadup to a three-ring circus act, waving flags, red white and blue bunting, and all.

How anyone gets anything of value out of broadcast news is beyond me.