Despite all the crap accusations of "not supporting the troops" or even "Treason" (c) Ann Coulter, essentially all Americans were happy to get rid of Saddam Hussein and would have been very pleased with a democratic Iraq that we could have pacified in a few weeks and brought our troops home with minimal casualties, and then move on to a real peace between Israel and the Palestinians, thereby permanently reducing the risk of Islamic terrorism and getting rid of a rogue state whose dictator hated us.

That was Bush's vision, that was what he was selling to us.

And if the result of that success was a permanent Republican majority, that's a risk I am willing to take. I am an American, and I want America to succeed. I have as much of a stake in this country being respected abroad and prosperous at home when Republicans are in office as when Democrats are.

Ultimately, that is what John Wayne was saying in 1960. Olbermann's point, quite simply, is that Bush has forfeited that automatic goodwill. In my opinion, many Republicans, never getting over the 1992 election, did not give Bill Clinton that same benefit of the doubt. The venom spewed over the Kosovo operation by the same people who say that any criticism of the manner in which the leaders at the top have botched Iraq puts our troops in danger takes hypocrisy to degrees beyond most people's comprehension. Oh, Kosovo succeeded. With minimal loss of lives. I guess that's the difference.

They were focusing on Eric Byrnes and his stupid dog jumping off his boat in the bay, in a 1-0 game with a runner on and Ichiro, who was already 2 for 2 at the plate. They barely switched to the actual game long enough to see his ball hit the wall (and they had no close up of the wall, since they were presumably using the camera for the dog) and so the entire sequence of the first inside-the-park home run in All Star game history was barely seen by the viewer. And they had to wait for Jeanne Zelasko's lame interview with Ichiro after the game to discover that was his first inside-the-park homer as well (which is counterintuitive, isn't it?). Until the bottom of the ninth, when the game got close again, the basic announcing format was to raise some irrelevant question, or play some stupid feature involving a player already out of the game, and then to continue it around the play-by-play regardless of the game situation.

Baseball is a wonderful game. Announcing baseball is not that hard; nearly all the local broadcasters for the 30 teams do a competent job. But if you have no confidence in your product, and more confidence in your own production abilities, you ignore the game and then complain when the ratings are poor.

The people Walsh describes standing outside the stadium, or watching the game together at home, are real baseball fans who have nowhere to watch national broadcasts of big games so long as FOX has the contract.

Take an important issue on which there is a general consensus outside the crazies of the world.

Find a place where the liberals, correct on this issues, exaggerate, perhaps on the grounds of hyperbole, perhaps on the grounds of expediency and perhaps on the grounds that simplifying something for the general public will make the world a better place.

Talk up the one exaggeration.

Talk it up so that it fits into nice little soundbites.

Find yourself drinking coffee with Bill O'Reilly.

Here's my point: we're in a propaganda war. The other side is wrong, but very good at propaganda. Their wrongness can literally destroy the earth right now.

So when someone wants to make a name for himself by emphasizing the good-intentioned over-exaggeration of the left, I say, why?

When Katrina happened, a lot of people said a lot of silly things, but everyone basically new all the things Mooney is saying (and I assure you, Al Gore does, too). So what? Is it really better to give more ammo to the "heated scientific debates about global warming" (your sub-head, Salon, not mine) by talking about it? I say STFU.

The poster who posited that one half of the Justice Dept. might have to be sealed off from the other half doesn't understand that federal departments sue one another all the time. Each is essentially represented by the Justice Dept. No biggie. Lawyers are very used to "Chinese walls."

Congress either has the balls to make this stuff stick or it doesn't.

Frankly, at this point, I wouldn't vote for a single member of Congress, for reelection or for President or for dogcatcher, who doesn't stand up to these idiots.

In saying that Stu Ungar was "perhaps one of the best poker players in history," the author simply loses his audience's trust. You can say Stu Ungar was "perhaps the best poker player in history" (he won the Main Event three times). You can say he was "one of the best poker players in history", which is essentially inarguable. But if you hedge your best by saying he was "perhaps one of the best poker players in history," you're basically showing your ignorance of the meaning of the words you employ. It would be like saying "some have said Babe Ruth was one of the best baseball players ever." Golly, who are these pundits? "Abraham Lincoln is considered by some to be among our best presidents."

Buy a spine before you write again.