Any movie where this is considered a funny rhyme for abortion is not worth seeing. That's a clear indication of how bad the script is likely to be.

You're not just talking about a strange, homoerotic dumbing down of political discourse. You're also limning the outlines of proto-fascist thinking because Mathews et al. are pantingly, achingly expressing their rampant sexism and their glorification of the military, two warning signs of a fascist state. That's why Bush in uniform made them cream in pilot's garb made them cream in their jeans.

This article confirms what Chalmers Johnson has said in Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis: we have lost the Republic and it's been replaced by a militaristic Empire. Even worse, give the enormous financial, political and psychological investment in maintaining this militarized state, we can never dismantle it. Now President will have the power or the courage to do so because it is simply, and quite madly, assumed that this is how we must exist in the world. What's worse, most Americans have no idea that we have colonized the globe with many hundreds of loathed bases in vassal states--perhaps if they did, and there was a charismatic voice urging we reverse course, we might be saved form our own delusions.

Truman fired MacArthur during the Korean War. Moreover, he argued that "Full and vigorous debate on matters of national policy is a vital element in the constitutional system of our free democracy." Can you imagine his pithy comments on this whole mess?

That's about the only charge or bit of abuse that hasn't been hurled his way. He's been called an asshole, sexist, lazy, stupid, arrogant, narcissistic--and that's just skimming the surface.

I wrtie a comic mystery series, among other things, and I know that humor is very subjective. Despite that fact, there's a wolf pack on Salon every-ready to chase down the author of a humorous piece they don't find funny and rip his throat out.

Listen, it was a light, comic essay. Having read his serious work, and having survived being fathered to become a stepfather, I laughed. If it's not to your taste, fine, but the level of knuckle-headed invective it seems to have evoked is totally out or proportion.

I think Salon needs a separate page: group therapy for the humor-challenged. What do you think, Joan?

Meanwhile, let's all go out to Applebee's for a family brunch.

Even Shapiro's praise has an edge to it (envy? suspicion? mockery?), and this sadly points to how she will be smeared during the campaign if she's the nominee: as a brown nose, a smarty-pants, a show-off.

Much as Gore was damned for being knowledgeable as opposed to Bush's supposedly charming loosey-goosey lack of depth. The media will revive its dichotomy: she's fake/the Republican is authentic; she's not somebody you'd want to have a beer with/he is.

It was cute, it was funny, it was light-hearted.

Don't be so stuffy, Tim: there has to be room for amiably amusing campaign ads, and pieces. They don't all have to be brilliant, dazzling, the Rebirth of Wonder.

Richardson's ads are a good example of the light aproach. Too bad he's a lousy candidate.

It should have been The Dixie Chicks' "Not Ready to make Nice."

Dowd quotes a tendentious article from the LA Times which highlights a stupid line from someone complaining about not wanting to deal with Clinton marital troubles we had to deal with for eight years all over again. The only reason that might even have been remotely true is that Dowd and her ilk won't let the faux story die. The Clintons are politicians, they're ambitious, their marriage has had ups and downs, what's surprising there? But people like Dowd portray them as everything from the Borgias to Stalin. It's sickening and arrogant and as egocentric as the bilge Richard Cohen produces for the Washington Post.

Dowd is a hack. What people call cleverness is more often nastiness, though she can turn a phrase. So Why has she not turned any of her wit on giuliani lately? What about the Clintons and Obama gets under her skin?

I lost respect for in 2004 because Dowd was never held accountable nor has she apologized for faking that Kerry NASCAR quote. Never.

What's amazed and frustrated me for the last seven years is that Bush has been constantly characterized as easy-going, fun-loving, and a good-hearted guy when his eyes and face have revealed he exact opposite. The man is cruel, mean-spirited and sadistic. it's all there in his face.

Just watch him, unedited, and see how many times his eyes harden or his face belies what he's saying or he smiles inappropriately. Better yet, watch him with the sound off and you'll see how much negative affect he radiates.

The media was snowed by his words and the carefully composed image, and never looked any further. From the very beginning, before he was president, the man gave me the creeps, and I could never have imagined spending any time in his presence. Not a beer, not a shot, not a handful of pretzel mix.

Wasn't our measurement there whether we were winning the heats and minds of the Vietnamese people? Has the Pentagon learned nothing, or are they just puppets mouthing whatever Rove and Cheney want them to say?

The mantra that we're at war/do what we say has penetrated the media and popular consciousness to an alarming degree. I overhead a codger at the gym the other day inveighing against criticism of the President. "Don't people know we're at war? You can't criticize him at a time like this!" And American history goes down the drain. Johnson, FDR, Wilson, Lincoln were all criticized during wars--and that's part of who we are as Americans. or maybe, part of who we used to be.