How often do you bash Al Qaeda in the same terms you do Bush or the war? I suspect that the ratio is 1000:1 or more

There are sites that shooter would approve of but the funny thing is that they don't spend many words bashing Al Qaeda either. They spend post after post bashing Islam and Muslims in general and do everything in their power to make sure that the confusion thus sown is compelete. It's after all rather difficult to justify an attack on Iraq when the enemy that attacked is Saudi.

there would be less discussion of whether GWB or OBL are worse for America IF GWB had actually done something about OBL. As it is, he's still available to act as the Goldstein to W's Big Brother. As the testimony of the trolls indicate, it's working like a charm.

to inject myself in the middle of this

Yes conservative thought can be and has been used to defend racism.

Yes, the LBJ Great Society created a lot of bureaucratic excesses which were easy to attack and helped the rise of Reaganism.

But attitudes change and its often prudent to try to change them by persuasion rather than condemnation.

I'm old enough to find it significant that over 80% of Americans see no problem with interracial dating. The most overt racism is now being replaced with anti-Muslim and anti-immigration bigotry.

Government and Corporations are both entities with insufficient accountability where corruption can breed.

The best hope we have for this country is if self-described conservatives and moderates come to see that BushCo is an abberation that needs to be countered. Ron Paul's candidacy provides a service becuase it allows at least SOME Republican's to say that out loud. Even if he would make a lousy President.

Sure. It is a government agency --- what did you expect to happen? It is every bit as effective as the Post Office.

The post office happens to perform an amazing service. And we all know that the reason the FDA has gone to shit is becuase it's being run by BushCo political cronies who would just as soon drown it in a bathtub.

Sorry bucky1 - I'm often sympathetic to libertarian arguements but you just lost me.

Point taken....

But more importantly, it represents a large change from how the same question was answered as few as 5 years ago. Attitudes are indeed changing.

the White House inner circle, calls “an uncomfortable truth-teller in the system.”

was deeply involved in Iraq policy,

a voice for calm, balance, reasoned discourse.”

Decorum dictates that I refer to the article as "boot licking" though that's not my first choice.

I refuse to answer on the grounds that I may disqualify myself as a source of measured and reasoned discourse.

Like rural electricy, the post office needs to be subsidized because it serves markets that private enterprise wouldn't touch.

As evidenced by all the nice things that are said about legal immigrants and moderate Muslims. yea...we're all over that!

That, ladies and gentlemen is a liar.

You actually need to rehearse your arguments more thoroughly. At this point you are successfully convincing me that you are incorrect.

Stated simply, there are things that are in the public interest that enlightened self-interest just isn't going to get done. Don't forget that government itself is created by market forces.

The "crickets" portion is yet another lie. (what a surprise!)

If the media coverage were silence then shooter wouldn't know about the issues to cite them.

And it worked like a champion. Notice that he's not currently the President.

The RW noise machine needs to be thoroughly discredited before the rest of the Progressive aganda can even make it to the table.

First things first.

is right twice a day, anonymous goverment officials occasioanlly say things that turn out to be true. But one must go down to the plank scale in order to determine how long the stopped clock is correct.

In this case that would be 2 X the Plank time ( 5.39E-44s) divided into 86400 (the number of seconds in a day.

So the odds of a stopped clock being right at any given moment are 1 in 8 plus 47 zero's (8.01484E+47)

I guess Joke Line got lucky this time!

If the former, then what made this anonymously-sourced reporting any better than what was already known, without attribution?

"The government source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity as a hedge against the possibility that what he was telling me would, in two days time, be proven to be a humongous pile of horshit...said..."

Remember too that the premise of Joe's article was that the Iraqi homegrown fundamentalists were uniting in an effort to rid the province of foriegn source fundamentalists. Since "Al Qeada" is now officially a franchise which can be used to brand any resistance movement, perhaps the source demanded anonymity because no one in the administration is allowed to acknowlege that the fighters in Iraq are NOT Al Qeada.

what the US role in the world should be and whether the troop commitments we're currently maintaining are actually helping in the overall mission of keeping America safer.

But in the meantime it sure is a damn shame that "leading by example" has been taken off the table. It was nice while it lasted.....

Well, of course it should. Separate question - will it?

Let's put it this way. If bucky1 hadn't mentioned it I'd be unaware of it.

But its a crucial point. The oath is to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic because its the Constitution that makes us a nation in the first place. It isn't our geography. It isn't our resources. It isn't our military. It's our Constitution.

Fortunately, I think most military people understand this significantly better than our 6 deferment VP does, but the fact that he can get away with such a misstatment speaks volumes about our potential survival as a Constitutional Republic.