Breadbaker had this to say: 'The proper answer on flag pins is simply, "My patriotism is shown by my love and concern for my country; I don't need a trinket to prove it."

Please leave the Pharisees out of it. We don't have religious tests for office in this country, thank you very much.'

I do like your proposed response. Quite pithy.

As for you intimating that I am advocating a 'religious test', well I don't like that. Sen. Obama has been the subject of a nasty campaign to insinuate he is some kind of secret moslem. Also, many prospective voters in Penn. (and elsewhere) claim some kind of allegience to Christianity.

My proposed response was an attempt for him to 'tie it all together' in a response that would both show what hypocrites those who wear that stupid pin are & show that Sen. Obama is familiar with a central tenet of the Christian faith (summarized as: Deeds, not words) and that he has no problem using Jesus' teachings to skewer his opponents (which they repeatedly try to do to us). His real 'opponents' being the Republican slime machine.

I don't want any 'religious test' myself, but if you think most people are going to vote for Pres. someone they think is a secret moslem and/or atheist, then you have a more exalted view of the electorate than I.

Ha ha. Great parody letter.

RW commented: 'Nothing gets a racist Southerner riled up as much as the very thought that some Negro is trying to rise above his or her station. And for some white fools whose dull sense of entitlement makes them think they deserve a better job than working the loading dock at their big-box hardware superstore, an African-American national leader has just gone TOO FAR AHEAD OF THEM.'

I was over at our local bowling alley a couple nights ago watching my friend's team bowl & at some point the conversation among us non-bowling fans turned to politics (yick) & I mentioned my support for Sen. Obama.

One of our team members wife, a nice 30 something white lady, said that while she considered herself a Democrat, she was worried that if Sen. Obama won then the blacks were going to start acting like they'd won the lottery or start doing stupid stuff in the stupid idea that Pres. Obama could get them off somehow (I can't really do it justice, but it was something wacky like that).

I told her she was crazy (while good naturedly laughing).

I'm getting the impression he won't be carrying Kentucky.

Trey Parker writes the episodes. Matt Stone generally takes care of all the business/merchendising, etc. stuff.

Trey Parker (and Matt Stone) are both very, very wealthy. Sothpark takes a Republican tone, since the main writer is definitely in their tax bracket.

Some of their stuff is very, very funny & I do watch it from time to time.

CO said up above: 'And the reason it works so well is that nobody will challenge the concept that each time an armored SUV explodes in Bagdad with our soldiers aboard, their flying body parts and sizzling, steaming blood is somehow protecting our freedom and liberty. Nobody is willing to take that concept on and actually speak the very plain and obvious truth that those limbs and that smoking blood simply does not do that. Which is why we shouldn't be there.

But Kristol is safe in his continued carny sideshow trick, because nobody is willing to tell american sons, daughters, wives and husbands, mothers and fathers, that their very real and painful and ongoing lifelong sacrifices do not equal freedom and liberty'

One of the aspects of our crazy adventure in Iraq that sadden/infuriate me the most (out of around 1,539) is that the vast majority of our dead servicemen & women have not died in combat. Instead, they've been blown up while they were riding around on a patrol or traveling here and there in Iraq. Now, the military will catalog them as a combat fatality & for the survivors of the fallen, that designation can get them some extra compensation (which I am all for).

But the bleak truth is that these fine young men & women were not engaging the enemy, charging fortifications, performing the bounding-overwatch as they advanced on the enemy's positions. They were instead wasted by our leaders.

If they had all died in the noble task of bringing Osama Bin-Laden to justice, then I (and they too, I suspect) would feel that they sacrificed their lives in pursuit of something concrete (getting that SOB Bin-Laden). Sadly, most of them have given their lives in what amounts to some horrible 'field tests' that only show how much explosives it takes to send schrapnel thru a humvee.

I wouldn't mind an Obama/Clinton ticket. If we're going to get the first Democratic senator elected since Pres. Kennedy, we could do worse than emulating his strategy of getting his biggest rival (Johnson) on the ticket with him.

Bill Timberman said: 'Cestmoi123, you don't have to be a genius to see that Israel is unlikely to survive much longer without coming to some sort of modus vivendi with its enemies. Its military superiority is increasingly questionable, and its demographic disadvantage is inescapable.'

Bill, I have to disagree with you here. Israel is by far the biggest military power in the Middle East. As long as the US is their ally, I don't see that changing.

Leaving the nukes aside, their biggest advantage is their Air Force, which gives them total air superiority & allows them to stop any mechanized assault (one of the problems of desert warfare is that it is hard to hide your armor from attack aircraft).

Certainly, Israel feels that so long as there are 120,000 US troops in Iraq, nobody is going to be attacking them. I can't say I disagree with their premise (much as I hate our troops being over there).