I got to hand it to you, mbf, you have a much stonger stomach than I if you could sit through that bunch of hooey.

Speaking of campaign finance, has anyone read the piece in the new issue of Rolling Stone regarding the Democratic campaign consultants and their exorbitant fees? They charge exponentially higher than their Republican counterparts, yet have basically nothing to show for it success-wise in presidential elections. It is truly stomach-churning stuff.

I was just watching that amazing documentary "The Decline and Fall of Western Civilization," chronicling the Hair Metal scene in Los Angeles on the late 80s. It's pertinent to Cliff May, because the director of the documentary keeps asking countless hopefuls and wannabes "What do you plan to do if your dreams of becoming a rock star don't pan out?" The answers, delivered by each interviewee is the same.

"But I will become I rock star, I just know it."

"But what if you don't?"

"But I will. I won't allow myself to think otherwise."

"But what if you don't?"

"I will. I'm sure of it."

It's the same complete detachment from any sort of rational reality--with these loser kids, and with Cliff May. It's even the same case with Rumsfeld, who FORBADE any sort of post-war planning at the Pentagon. Just a complete separation from reality.

"One advantage to a withdrawal from Iraq that I have not seen mentioned in the press is that freeing up our military forces to concentrate on Afghanistan would greatly improve the security situation in that country, the one from which Osama bin Laden launched his attack on the World Trade Center and America on 9/11/2001."

Yeah, you pretty much only hear that from liberals.

"However, unlike Bush who just seems clueless, Giuliani is also mean, vindictive and personal."

Trust me. Anyone who knows ANYTHING about Bush can tell you he's all of those things and more. Think Karla Faye Tucker, Cindy Sheehan, Abu Ghraib, renditioning to black sites, etc.

ought to be an impeachable offense. No one who's this off-the-rails has any business being the leader of the United States.

over and over again it's simply the exercise of free speech?

First, you're one to talk when it comes to accurate reporting. I have never seen you accurately characterize a liberal viewpoint in your posts to date. Not once. You consistently, and most likely deliberately, distort and mischaracterize the words and intentions of those you choose to "criticize" here. That's why almost no one will respond to you.

Second, why are you pretending to care about habeas corpus? When did you ever care about that? Christ, you can't even spell it correctly, let alone understand it or opine on it's significance.

I understand the motivation on your part to be a constant fly-in-the-ointment, but it would help if you had any credibility whatsoever. But you don't.

I know... but his multiple misspelling of hapeas corpus was too much of a hanging curve not to hit out over the fence. I'll exercise better restraint in the future, I promise. I'm convinced he doesn't believe half of what he types anyway.

Bush is going to wind up with less friends than Michael Corleone at the end of "Godfather II."

I don't think we'll see a prsident in our lifetime who does not want to expand executive power to some degree. They all want the line-item veto, for example. When you factor in that many members of congress would like to someday be president, you can understand why they wouldn't want to squawk too loudly on this issue. Now, or ever.

I agree with you totally there. But my point was that I think the fact that anyone who wants to be president would like to expand those poweres to some degree, explains to an extent why they don't want to lock horns with this president on this issue. I don't agree with it, I just believe that's how it is. More or less.

Nice Dylan reference there. Just a few minutes ago, I was on the Dylan web site reading the lyrics to "With God on Our Side." Powerful stuff, indeed.

http://bobdylan.com/moderntimes/songs/withgod.html

What does that have to do with ABC's Iranian story? I thought that this discussion was about Iran? It seems important to "No Name Given" to out Salon as hypocrites, but that has no bearing on the validity of the ABC story. And the validity of the ABC story is way more important than Salon's Russian piece.

That being said, I really don't care if this story has "Karl Rove" written all over it or not. I just want heads to roll when it turns out that this story is "the boy who cried wolf." You know, like Dan Rather's head rolled in 2004.

Four years of:

"Everything's going great."

"Things are getting better."

"There's no need to change strategy because we are making such good progress with this strategy."

"Stay the course."

"There's much reason for optimism."

Followed by:

"Well, since things are going so poorly, we're going to try something 'different,' called 'the same thing, only more of it."'