The religious right knows it is being used by the GOP. The GOP is being used by the religious right. It's one of those "politics doesn't make such strange bedfellows" deals. The religious right knows it can squeeze a certain amount of favors from the GOP for its support. They know the Democrats won't give them the time of day.

The GOP will gladly pose as anti-abotion for religious rightwingers' votes (they will never outlaw Roe v Wade. It's a cash cow for the GOP and results in several million voters at the polls who would ordinarily stay home. Take abortion out of the mix and the GOP goes bankrupt).

The GOP will pretend to be anti-evolution and anti-"elite" while sending their kids to the finest private schools.

The GOP will pretend they are against stem cell research for religious reasons when they are really against federally-funded stem cell research because they don't want the fed to get hold of patents. Those stem cell patents are going to be worth a ton of money in the private sector.

It's a win-win for both. And the GOP and religious rightwingers are all huge hypocrites, so they belong together.

November, 2004.

Kerry was practically declared the winner with a 51/48 margin from exit polls.

Then we were told "People lie when they fill out exit poll forms" as the votes suddenly turned around.

I trust no polls. As long as the other guys are marketing the voting machines, polls are meaningless.

America has known it all the way back to 1992, when we voted for Bill Clinton. In 1996, we voted again for Clinton, having seen that crazy bastard Newt Gingrich trying to make a wreck of the United States. America knew it in 2000, when it voted for Al Gore and made him president. Unfortunately for Gore, Clinton didn't get to stack the Supreme Court with moderates, so the radical conservatives who were on the court took the presidency away from Gore and handed it to Bush. Do I think Bush lost in 2004? yes, I do. Voter fraud, illegal and immoral vote-blocking and high-tech chicanery were employed by the minority to take away the election once again.

And I still know more than Sullivan does. Because my eyes are not impaired by soft-focus stars. My eyes are more mature than Sullivan's, my eyes see clear, rock-hard truth. These rightwingers are extremists. They are radicals. They are far more radical than any "liberal" who ever held elected office in the United States of America. They are fanatics. And what do we know about radical extremist fanatics?

They will stop at nothing.

How foolish do you have to be to have sat around filling the air with billowy "articulate" rhetoric this past decade while extremists have taken over the media outlets with the help of their corporate backers? How blind do you have to be? How hard did you laugh at Hillary Clinton when she identified a vast rightwing conspiracy? Are you adult enough, are you clear-eyed enough now to recognize what is right in front of your face, to own up to it and to realize the implications?

This is serious business, Mr Sullivan. You helped these hardeyed radicals take over all branches of government against the will of the majority of the American people. You helped give them cover, you helped make them palatable, you told people it was ok to buy into their disguise as responsible, moral Christians. You excoriated and satirized those of us who were not only smart enough to recognize the true nature of these extremists, we were loud enough to protest, we refused to keep quiet. How cynical of us to refuse to buy your "intellectual" ramblings about this puerile crew who are and have always been bent on destroying the federal government, financially bankrupting it, gutting it of regulations that protect citizens from rapacious profitmakers; shrinking it to a size where it could be drowned in a bathtub. You thought that was a good thing, did you? To dismantle the safety net put in place during the Great Depression, which kept my parents fed and gave them subsidized health care in old age after they'd given the best years of their lives to stoke the financial engine of this country.

Well, fuck you. Our generation will not live as long or as well as our parents did, thanks to the shifting of capital away from the mass of citizenry and over to the few who are fawned over by your moral, righteous Republican extremist pals. The few who are laughably labeled "entrepreneurs" by your craven conservative allies, though most of them are inheritors, not producers, of wealth.

You make me sick with your soft sobbing over the mess you fully enabled with every essay you wrote and every television appearance you made. And you're still a fucking idiot who can't wipe the fluffy clouds away from your field of vision. You're still a coward who won't fully disengage from fascism-with-a-smiley-face and call it what it is.

You said you thought Dick Cheney was sexy. You said his paternal man-of-the-world schtick made you want to roll over and ask to have your tummy scratched. Remember?

My country and its constitution are very nearly laid to waste and the country of Iraq is fully laid to waste because of sexy Daddy Cheney and his crew.

You're a self-serving, squeaking moron.

Even though Dreier's chief of staff lives with him and is on his payroll? Wouldn't that piece of information be relevant if Dreier were heterosexual and his girlfriend (or wife) was on his (tax dollar-paid)payroll?

No contest....Bindi Irwin.