The article is a bit sycophantic, but W.Green's potty-mouthed insults are childish.

Having listened to Franken's AirAmerica show from the start and having bought his previous two books, I'll probably skip this one. Al Franken is funnier on paper then live, but those who call him a comedian are abusing the term. Real comedians are armed with thousands of jokes and have worked-out routines and are prepared to handle *anything.* Franken, on the other hand, is often flat-footed and tongue-tied and seems to write one good joke a week.

And does anyone else notice that he's using his radio show as a platform to run for office? He can be fairly critical and rightly hard on some guests, but he's always sweet and easy to the beltway power-people, even the most disgusting media liars.

Catherine was the best thing about the show ( what a sexy mind! ) .. and Joe, of course.

Whenever I read an article like this, I am reminded of Dennis Ritchie's phrase: "intoxicated with metaphor."

It seems to be the only way to get the Media to cover protest.

Mr. Manjoo's article reminds me of a man I knew who wouldn't leave his cheating girlfriend or quit working with his lying business partner because he could never find absolute proof of thier duplicity.

Farad Manjoo writes mostly about tech affairs, but human affairs aren't like science experiments that can be repeated in a lab. What people do and say when no recorders are running is ultimately unprovable. You'll take years, and far beyond the next several elections to sort out the mess of nitpicking dismissals Mr. Manjoo presents here.

Demand a "smoking gun" and risk being a sucker next time, or be like most people who live in the real world; use your judgement based on less then perfect evidence.

Evidence that's pretty overwhelming in the big picture.

Election fraud has *never* been proven in any American election, but we know it's happened often.

Why is it that we need to prove a stolen election? What we need is to make Americans aware of the facts that we do have. Those facts are disturbing enough.

What's important is not some golden standard of proof, what's important is restoring integrity to elections.

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And Salon is sounding more and more mainstream corporate media with it's fixation on these trivial horserace issues.

"exchanging Bush for Cheney does nothing but swap one out of control executive for one that's even worse."

Wrong.

It replaces a 29% approval rating President for a 12% approval rating President, and since Cheney gets what he wants right now, it won't make the governance any worse.

Impeachment is a political indictment, not a criminal one. It would be both morally justified AND politically smart for a Democratic Congressional majority to impeach and remove George Bush Jr. from office.

Perhaps a newly crowned Dick Cheney would arrogantly try for a term of his own.

What Democratic presidential candidate wouldn't be pleased to run that race?

And Harry Ried's verbal gaffes and inadvertant reversals of logic is a demonstration of the decline in the quality of our political leadership over the past 50 years, matching the similar decline in our culture and education.

American democracy: we get what we deserve.

Truthout's prediction of indictment was no different then all predictions of future events.

To trust a news source is silly, you should be skeptical of any reporting that's not verified by multiple disinterested sources.

In the lead up to war, it seemed possible that even though Saddam obviously didn't have any nuclear weapons, he might use oil money to get some someday.

That thought changed me from anti-war to a qualified pro-war.

The change lasted 1-1/2 days, as I remembered that reasoning from fear isn't reasoning at all. Protecting ourselves from nuclear weapons was a completely different business then invading Iraq, and invading Iraq was a dumb idea.

Protecting ourselves from a few hundred angry and poor ( compared to our wealth ) foreigners shouldn't scare us out of our wits. We're a nation of 300 MILLION PEOPLE.

Every nation on the face of earth has a few hundred people who would like to "hurt" it. There are nuts right here who would like to destroy America. I've heard nuts right here say they would love to nuke Iran, or nuke Israel, or kill any number of foreign individuals who they hate for various reasons.

Some crimes do get carried out, like the Oklahoma City bombing. It's no coincidence that the perpetrator of that incident cited his anger at our government's overblown and stupidly miliaristic response to the Waco wackos, another group that was angry AND fearful.

Each time we crank up the fear and fire up the big guns, how many more wackos do we motivate to get up off the couch and go buy some explosives?

Islam's Koran does contain some hateful messages, maybe even more hateful messages then the Bible. The vast majority of Christians don't advocate the kind of slaughter directed by God in the Old Testament, and the vast majority of Muslims don't support flying airplanes into buildings full of people.

Are you afraid of Muslims? Really? Do you REALLY think that Islam is a threat?

As someone who's sold security equipment, I understand the power of fear to make a sale. We're being sold a cart of bull, for a trillion dollar price tag.

The wisest words ever spoken by an American President:

"We have nothing to fear but fear itself."

So stop with the damn fear already!