I'm tired of this year being used as a bugaboo to teach people with strong beliefs to keep quiet. Why? Because the GOP's version of 1968 has been SUCCESSFUL.

In 1968, left-wing hardliners derailed the Democrats chance to win the election. And what happened with the the GOP? Why, their rightwing hardliners now rule the country. The radicals of the GOP hold the presidency, both houses and are happily replacing the judiciary with radicals.

The radicals of 1968 are NOTHING compared to this crowd. They got nowhere. They didn't even get us out of Vietnam. The military got us out of Vietnam when they realized they couldn't win without using nukes and that there was no way they'd be able to use them. Opposition to the war didn't get us out of there - if it had been popular opposition to the war which ended it, then we would have left Vietnam after Tet.

What made the GOP's radicals so easy for this country to swallow?

One - Jesus (abortion falls under this heading.)

Two - the flag.

Three - Up-to-the-minute marketing techniques. Four- a Democratic Party that has been running away from 1968 for over three decades, using wishy-washy, weasly language and Slick Willy's compromises (see where it got him?).

If Democrats actually believed in something, if the smart kids in the party were as adequately schooled in PR marketing as the GOP's rising stars are, and if the DNC would stop hiring fucking three-time-loser consultants to run campaigns and finally cut loose the lost language of bleeding heart liberalism, (say "working families" instead of "the poor", guys! Join the 21st century) than maybe we'd get somewhere. For Christ's sake, I CRINGED every time John Kerry opened his mouth and dispensed a pile of windblown dust during the 2004 campaign. Yeah, I voted for him, but only because I would have voted for a toe fungus over Bush. But was THIS the best our party could do?

Give us pols who could stand shoulder to shoulder with Paul Wellstone. He was a true Democrat, and he had to die (be killed?) to be put out of office. He didn't cower before the almighty specter of 19fucking68.

I have to use one of everyone's least favorite, overused catchphrases here, but it fits:

Get over it.

The review tells us that the movie never lets us forget so much about Haiti. But it doesn't let us remember one thing - it was older men, not older women, who went to Haiti in the 70s and early 80s to have sex with younger men.

I just don't think it's right to render a real story politically correct the way the author of the book did by portraying the sex tourists as women. I think it would have been as much of a potent and poignant a story to have had the characters be male, as they were in real life.

Where's the outrage from the White House and its legion of wingnut blowhards, huh? The FBI claims that the "tunnel plot" was an "ongoing investigation". If that's so, then the NY Daily News blew the lid on an international terror investigation.

Where are all the screamers now? Why aren't they baying for the blood of the Daily News editors and reporters? Could it be it was a bullshit "plot" and the White House (or... let's say... a White House toady, like Representative Peter "I'm SUCH an asshole" King) "leaked" the story to the Daily News?

I think there needs to be an investigation! I think we need to know who leaked this extraordinarily sensitive information on what was an ongoing international terrorist investigation to the Daily News. I think we should charge that person with TREASON!

And I'd really scrutinize Peter King while we investigate this. Just because he's SUCH an asshole.

"Meh," said President Bush, when asked about possible plans to capture bin Laden.