gun toating? what's a toat, mr. education? Your paragraph was so rife (look it up, buttmunch and replete (still under r, for retard with spelling, grammer, context, and factual errors you're damn near presidential. And there is no left left in this country. the middle in the fifties is the left of today. the country, dumbing down by the moment, has lurched to the reich so far that maroons like you are "conservative", when you're just racist crackers with talk radio to feed you talking- make that mumbling- points. It will be so refreshing to have a President who can speak extemporaneously on any subject without pissing his depends, and it will all the sweeter to have a black man, his articulate and forceful wife, and his two darliing daughters to clean up the mold and slime left by the disgusting bushistas. Grab your ankles: change is coming through. Grease up if you can afford the petroleum. Semper fi. jeffersonian (look that up,too, idiot stick). Compare and contrast to Hamiltonian, and not the friggin' horse race, doofus.

Massive ignorance, Dick, which is typical for fascists. Marxism is NOT socialism, it's communism. By your measure, most western countries are Marxist, including England, France, Germany, Sweden, and others. Progressive taxation is NOT wealth redistribution, you moron. It expects the most from those who benefit the most. Don't try to hand me that class warfare shit, or that "poor white men are being set upon" crap. As Warren Buffet, the richest man in the country said, there is class warfare, and the rich are winning. The chasm between rich and poor in this "christian" nation is the greatest it's been since the very early 20th century. So piss off with your xenophobic faux-religious tripe. Christ said "whosoever does this unto the least of these my brothers has done it unto me". America worships money, material gain, and power. God doesn't make the top ten. and the founders were Deist, not fundamentalist whackaloons. Have lovely fascistic day. jeffersonian.

what a pack of adolescent jackals. you expect purity? join a monastery or a convent. Politics involves strategic choices, not straightjacketed ideology. Read The Idiot, if you're not too idiotic yourself. you maroons are drifting right back to the 2000 meme "no difference between Gore and Bush". That worked well. Grow the hell up.

Sex/auto references are at least as old as Robert Johnson songs from the early thirties. And that road runs both directions, feminist knicker-twisters. Bessie Smith wasn't talking about reptiles in Black Snake Moan. It is borderline that they chose a model who, as Chuck Berry wrote, is too cute to be a minute over seventeen. And women aren't necessarily used; some are merely experienced, and that's a good thing. A very good thing.

Hippies were not political, Einstein. So "that hippie shit", in the redneck space where there would be a brain if one were present, means serious civil rights and anti-war protests are the same thing as Woodstock and Altamont. Dumbass. The coalition of labor, students, militant religious leaders (like King and Berrigan) were very instrumental in the passage of the civil rights and voting rights acts, and in turning the national tide against the war in Vietnam. What's lacking today is number. People, absent the draft breathing down their necks, don't care enough to bother. Shop. Fumble with the channel changer. Swill Buttwiper and eat Fat Food. Code Pink does have some whiff of Wavy Gravy with a serious case of PMS, but at least they're out there fighting the good fight. I wish them well. It won't work. There were worldwide protests as large or larger than anything ever seen, just before we went to war in Eye-rack. The media snored. The protests died down. There are a dozen or so hardcore peace activists that come to the town square every Friday at commute time. On the war anniversaries, many more turn out- hundreds, including me- and most people honk in support. It would take hundreds of thousands clogging major cities, week in and week out, to change things in any meaningful way. I, sadly and seriously, doubt it. jeff

Effectiveness is not usually- in fact, hardly ever- immediately evident. It's not that kind of battle. It requires a steadfastness that is not telegenic and is not easily maintained. Yes, the most telling demonstrations (Selma, et al) were before the anti-war movement grew in importance later in the decade. There have been changes that can be traced to the countercultural upheavals in the late sixties- organic food, the notion of alternative energy- but nothing that can act as a counterweight to the media fed shallow consumerism and cynical self absorbed attitude that prevails today. Half the country doesn't bother to register to vote. We're encouraged when over half of those that do actually get off the couch and vote- and we're talking national, presidential elections. In local elections, where critical issues are most often successfully resolved and voter leverage is the greatest, turnouts in the twenty to thirty percent range are common. A recent country election here in northern California, supposedly a hotbed of liberal enlightenment and involvement, drew less than twenty percent. Ben Franklin was right : a republic, if you can keep it. It remains to be seen if we can; there's a fairly persuasive argument that the republic has already been co-opted, and that we're just talking about decorations, not the structure of the house we all occupy, but, increasingly, do not own. If we want it back, it's going to take a lot of pushing for a lot of years by a lot of people, and dressing in bizarre pink outfits and having hissy fits that get five seconds of air time won't cut the mustard. jeff