...would be a great slogan for Ned Lamont.

Note how Lieberman's supporters here can only twist themselves into self defeating paroxysms of rage. But Lamont supporters can just be Democrats. And we can just run against George Bush.

I like Ned's chances against Twisty Joe.

...in the party of FDR and JFK to bash Ned Lamont for his wealth. Not to mention the party that just ran Theresa Heinz's husband for president.

...at the first panel, was mad again by the last one.

Seriously.

Just today somebody at Slate told me it was too 'subtle' to explain how freedom and democracy in Iraq could make us safer from ME terrorists, while at the same time we're torturing Iraqis, killing them, and making them live under a reign of fundamentalist Islamic terror. My word, 'too subtle.'

Now we can't go because that would show weakness.

So the terrorists have got us coming and (not) going. They attack us, we have to invade a country--pretty much any Muslim country, really. Then they attack us in that country and then we have to stay.

If we're so strong, how come we keep doing the terrorists' bidding?

...is that they don't know what they want to say.

They ought to say that we were attacked on 9/11 because we were strong, not because we were weak.

They ought to say that 'freedom and democracy' in Iraq can mean nothing if we refuse to establish order in Iraq or to treat Muslims with justice.

They ought to say that our strength in the world lies in our values and our alliances, not in our ability to kill people and break things.

They ought to say that America needs to accept responsibility for what it does and to stop blaming other people for our failures.

But they won't say those things because they're no more willing to embrace responsibility than George Bush and Dick Cheney are.

It should be noted that Lincoln was in fact appreciated by the eastern newspapers, no matter what his accent was:

http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/cooper.htm

The speech electrified Lincoln's hearers and gained him important political support in Seward's home territory. Said a New York writer, "No man ever before made such an impression on his first appeal to a New York audience." After being printed by New York newspapers, the speech was widely circulated as campaign literature.

Here's the money quote, eerily relevant to today's situation:

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

Death used to be a public event. Funerals were public and soldiers who died in war were mourned and honored.

Now we hide all of that. We don't want to hear about funerals or anything about the soldiers. We don't want to hear about the carnage of 9/11 or the carnage of Iraq. We want it all pushed away and hidden so we don't have to think about it.

Pretty soon our wars won't be public events anymore, either. They'll be completely private affairs held entirely at the discretion of the president. Soldiers who die or get wounded in a war will simply vanish, never to be seen again. Those who tell tales of the war will be arrested for treason. When the war is finally over (if ever), and revealed to a surprised and grateful public, we'll happily erect monuments in our public squares with the names of the glorious and lucky survivors. They were all winners! we'll think. And we'll feel so proud to have been true patriots who slogged forward in the dark and stayed the course.

...left the Union, stole Union property, and left Union loyalists in the South stranded without recourse to their rights as American citizens. NO way could Lincoln simply let the Southerners leave.

They were also fighting for slavery and it would have lasted there for another 100 years had they won. Christian, my ass. These were people who kept little boys sleeping under their beds at night in order to push out the chamber pots.

...so the South did more than half the killing. And they did it because they couldn't abide by the results of an election and because they couldn't stand the thought of black folks being free.

http://www.civilwarhome.com/casualties.htm

There were loyalists all throughout the South. But their opinion wasn't taken into account.

..and lazy people, chas.

If all Bush cares about is clearing brush and fart jokes, then it has to be asked: what are we paying him for?

Why are we paying for his vacations and his bike rides? Why are we paying for his foreign trips so he can embarrass us by talking with his mouth full, telling bizarre pig jokes, and grabbing the shoulders of women leaders?

Since he's punting the Iraq problem over to the next president, why don't we just get the next president in there right now, even if it's that fatass Cheney? Let's see how long fat boy's ticker lasts in that job. Let's see how well the public likes fat boy's face on the presidency.

If Bush doesn't want to accept responsibility and doesn't want to make any decisions, then why do we still want him as president?

The Democrats should make this a campaign issue for the fall: if Bush won't do the job, then what are we paying him for?