Is it possible that America looks different if you work in D.C. and are surrounded by the flying monkeys whose chattering drowns out everything else? If you or I were subjected to the 24/7 chatter, might not we start looking at America a bit more like the monkeys do?

And it's also possible that we're wrong about America.

I mean, if Hillary's triangulation was such a bad idea, then how could Bush have squeaked back in in 2004? Isn't it possible that, despite the growth of strong anti-war sentiment, that the bulk of America is still under the sway of war rhetoric?

All the online "liberal" blogs I read strongly object to Hillary's "centrism," and rightly so. But the online "liberal" community is hardly representative of the bulk of America.

"Does anyone really give a damn what is done to those who would happily decapitate/disembowel/incinerate anyone with whom they disagree?"

You swallow the prejudice that "they" want nothing but to kill you, so it's ok to kill them.

That's stupid. You don't know anything about these people want or want to do, you just swallow whatever B.S. your leaders tell you about what these people want to do to you.

OOOOGA BOOOGA!!! ( Hunthorse cowers under bed and cries: "save me, George Bush!!!" )

The only ones I know who are happy to decapitate/disembowel/incinerate people are guys like you.

Isn't it possible that the Democrats want to be perceived as weak?

Voter perception of responsibility is easy to manipulate. This may be a savvy strategy to insulate themselves when the MSM tries to divert the blame for BushCo's screw-up at the Democrats.

I agree with your point of view, but no Rockefeller would ever be a dupe of Bushco. The Rockefellers have been at the top of the American aristocracy for over a hundred years. I would never expect any Rockefeller to act for the benefit of the American public.

That a Rockefeller could even get elected is a sign of American amnesia.

Subject a young, independently-minded child to rigid religious indoctrination. Tell them that by nature they are dirty and sinful, nasty and bad, and that their sexual feelings are evil, Punish them for petty doctrinal infractions. Deride and insult them when they ask impertinent skeptical questions. Teach them that non-believers will be tortured for eternity, and that it is God's will.

And most importantly, be a hypocrite. Demonstrate hatred and anger while preaching love and forgiveness.

Voila! Angry atheist. Surprised?

-----------------------

for myself, I've luckily avoided the worst of that and am the most Fundamentalist-friendly atheist you'll ever meet.

"Love the Christian, Hate the Christianity." - grubert

Fuller is a retired Minneapolis StarTribune reporter that I've read over the years. He has a recent post with a credible explanation for the pathetic performance of the MSM.

http://www.jamesclayfuller.com/2007/11/if-press-corps-says-it-doubt-it.html

I hope Glenn takes a moment to read it, it's worth commenting on.

Just because one civilian working in Iraq has never seen or heard U.S. Marines do or say anything not nice about Iraqis only means that he hasn't seen it where and when he was there.

One man's story isn't the whole story, not by a damn sight.

America has around 300,000 troops and contractors in Iraq, some are naughty and some are nice. If even only 1% are naughty, that's still 3000 loose-cannon American Rambos killing Iraqi babies.

More innumeracy.

"Lancet came up with a number and some experts say it's reliable. Science would never have a bias, would it? Of course it would."

Lancet didn't "come up with a number." Lancet went to Iraq and counted violent deaths from a sample of several hundred Iraqi families. They chose families from all over the country, making sure the sample density reflected the population density. Then they multiplied the measured rate by the population of Iraq.

The number is an estimate, but it's not made up, and the methods are the same as those used by Western corporations to market toothpaste for decades. The methods have been verified and shown to be very reliable.

Science doesn't have a bias, people have biases. Your bias seems to be anti-Science. My bias is anti-bull.

This isn't a case of competing lies, it's a case of lying military brass versus honest medical researchers trying to determine the truth.

It's easy to diss what you don't understand. Read the damn Lancet report. I have. They're not claiming to have proven anything, they just report what they found using standard methods.

"Republicans hate Hillary because she has lied about an uncountable number of things,"

Why don't you enumerate a few? Let's see how many of those 'lies' are just manufactured Arkansas Project smears.

The best way to shut up a wing-nut troll is to force them to be detailed and accurate.

Edwards would be the best available candidate, but Hillary will be a damn sight better candidate then Kerry was. She *is* a fighter.

Bush and Cheney are nothing like Nixon or Clinton. Nixon and Clinton were just regular shmoes who fought their way to office, but Bush's family pedigree includes deep and close connections to the national security figures and banking, oil, defense and media moguls. H.W.'s Rolodex is famous, and his son benefits from the Bush family's reputation for payback.

Clinton's off-the-record comment to Helen Thomas that the media is running American politics is probably all we need to know. All national politicians dread being the target of mainstream media ire ( as Glenn Greenwald continually points out ). Only politicans with no media chits have the cojones to call for

impeachment.

Bush's powerful friends and connections matter more then any other single factor. It's pretty amusing how successfully Dubya was able to pretend to be an outsider.