I recall reading how more doctrinaire leftists would deride the "sewer socialists" of Milwaukee -- who foolishly (in the diehards' view) paid attention to bricks-and-mortar work in Milwaukee: parks, streets, schools, libraries -- infrastructure, in other words. Instead of breathing fire and burning draft cards and bras, the socialist mayors of Milwaukee concentrated on pragmatic good governance and capable administration of their city, and Milwaukee benefited from it.

I think Russ Feingold, while not a socialist, certainly embodies that vital pragmatism of Wisconsin and Minnesota liberals, concentrating on improving the day-to-day quality of life of their everyday constituents (versus the "real world" of lobbyists, special interests, and endless truckloads of campaign cash that seems to hold pols like Clinton spellbound, to say nothing of the majority of American politicians in their increasingly potholed cities).

The GOP make their bones by bilking undesired voters of their votes, declaring that government doesn't work, and cutting funding in the interests of further expanding the wealth of the rich, and claiming that there's no public money to be had for needed changes (or worse, that private industrial contracts are the key to getting things done, which amounts to graft, anymore, given their track records). The GOP are swindlers and hucksters, pure and simple.

Seems like the smart Democratic approach would be to take pages from the sewer socialists and upper Midwest liberals and deliver vital infrastructure improvements to everyday Americans, rather than trying (*koff DLC koff*) to out-Republican the Republicans in their fraud and graft.

The beauty of that strategy is that the GOP simply can't follow the Democrats there, because they hate the idea of public monies yielding public benefits! If more Democrats were like Feingold, the Democrats would be unbeatable -- the only Republicans that could continue would be ones who had to grudgingly pretend that they supported social spending just to stay in office -- that's what representatives should be doing, versus dancing to the tunes called by lobbyists.

It sounds like Gonzales has gotten more of a Southern accent than he had during his confirmation hearing. Maybe he's stressed, or maybe they thought he'd be the folksy corrupt Attorney General. He should've worn a white three-piece suit and a bowtie.

Impeach. Impeach. Impeach. Impeach. One for Bush. One for Cheney. One for Gonzo. And one extra one, just in case the others don't stick.

the Peace Corps. (I'm kind of surprised the Republicans have even kept that office open.)

Hahah -- I think they're planning to militarize the Peace Corps, in the interests of National Security and the War on Terror. They're also going to turn AmeriCorps/VISTA into a domestic surveillance and involuntary detention agency.

So what exactly is Karl Rove's job now?

Oh, he's the conscience of the Bush League, naturally. God(tm) help us all. Or Mammon. Or Satan. Whomever they're really working for.

Victory in Iraq?

RUSH: (clapping). Right on, right on. As long as he's at the helm, that will happen.

Yeah, he's only had FOUR YEARS to win. C'mon, World War II took that long, and this is...oh, wait...it's not nearly as big a war as WWII. Hmm...yeah. Well, there's no war like more war!

Well, maybe Rush's hoping that Bush'll pull a Stalin and stay at the helm for a few more decades -- once you start violating the laws of Congress and the Constitution, everything's kind of up for grabs, isn't it? Bush/Cheney(Rove) in '08 -- I can see the slogans: "We Can't Change Leadership Now; the War's Just Begun! Four More Years!" and "Sometimes you have to destroy democracy in order to save it."

Yeah, I think it's funny how Big Media have reacted to the Internet over the years -- ignoring it, deriding it, ridiculing it, questioning its validity and integrity (setting themselves up as the paragons, of course). And now, what, maybe fear?

I'm pretty mad that Big Media (the Bush Enablers) have jumped on this tidbit, tried to give it legs...

Plus, they even made news that's still being debated today, with Barack Obama pledging to meet with our enemies while Clinton kept a "presidential" distance from them,

The whole Obama-is-naive angle, what a crock. To hear Clinton say she'd not talk to those leaders is exactly as Obama characterized it -- a very Bushian move on her part. He's offering a return to actual diplomacy, and Big Media is having none of it, working that story.

Never mind that Bushian "we are the world" politics have dragged American international credibility into the gutter -- the real story should be that Clinton wants to stay that course, instead of deriding Obama for recognizing that it's not working, and for our need to change it.

The Big Media kingmakers make me sick, so I'm glad the Internet is making them nervous.

It's frustrating for me to agree with Joe Biden's tripartite solution, the federal division of Iraq (because I think Biden's candidacy is going exactly nowhere). I've thought for years that this is the way out of it; the only reason people don't consider it is because it will give Iran more prominence in the region -- but a somehow stable, Shiite-led Iraq will still give prominence to Iran; it's probably why the Sunnis are fighting so hard to keep the insurgency going; they know that if they lose, they're finished. Iraq-as-a-nation has always been a bit of a fiction going back to the British Mandate after WWI. We're already in a bad way, trying to force the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds together -- at least a three-state solution would give the people in the region what they would seem to want.

If they work out a means of sharing oil revenues, and push for UN recognition of the three states, maybe there'd be a manageable peace there that wouldn't require hundreds of thousands of American troops to maintain.

But I guess that's not what this country's current leadership wants.