Hey man- I like your message of hope. Only real problem, I think, is that we've been down this road before.

I thought people had woken up after Shrub's absolutely DISASTROUS debate performances. Member those? I mean, Bush looked like a Toastmaster dropout at best and my 16 year old cousin at worst. THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD, ladies and gentlemen, and even after Smear Boat and the debates, people- deeply wrong people!- still elected him.

So I forever lost faith in the people of this country to be uh smart about public officials.

Secondly, I also pretty much lost faith in the political system. If these assholes in Congress had any BALLS whatsover, they would have denounced this sham from the beginning. But No, they wanted to play softly-softly longball to protect their own skin. Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and even I guy I like, John Edwards, epitomize this attitude.

Thing is: THEY HAVEN'T CHANGED. They're only jumping on Bush and Co. because of the POLLS.

OR maybe they've "seen the light". But AFAIC, without an impeachment- which would send posterity a bold, heroic, noble message about f**ing with "We the People"- I don't see jack shit changing. Sorry.

The American people are *one* catastrophic terror event away from seeing just how thin this ostensible national awakening really is.

Most of the spineless, obsequious toadies who passively and actively assisted the NeoCon Machine for the last six years still have their jobs. When they no longer do, *that* will be a genuine political sea change.

Congressional Democrats failed the American people by refusing to do what was necessary to become an effective opposition party. They chose instead to sit around with their thumbs up their asses issuing meticulously crafted statements of "concern" while the Republic (not to mention Iraq) was looted and torched.

In the vacant eyes the Democratic Establishment, none of George W. Bush's criminal acts are so great that they cannot resolved by immediately taking impeachment "off the table."

What unites Democratic politicians today is the collective desire to win the presidency. Justice and accountability - like security and common sense - will just have to wait. Indefinitely. Just ask anyone who was around for Iran-Contra.

Never leave here. Most of the time no one understands what I am saying, and most all of the other times, I can't, for the deer life of me, understand what some people are saying, either. I keep saying to myself in a near catatonic ginger trance, "I must try to understand."

Your baby--Love includes the world and time as a pregnant women includes her child whose wrongs she, and her hubby... must suffer and forgive. That is a plagiarized from a sorting through agrarian Wendell Berry. The Kentuckian writings are always wholesome food for thought.

I want a law added, an amendment to a Bill of Rights that is enforced. The Law? *People should have grandchildren first.*

Life gets hectic. Child rearing and cultivation of our precious offspring in the 21 century ain't easy. We must try to give children complete attention to what children can do to save us. In first several years after birth...Well, we often flunk. Give total attention, is what I'm saying. No Worry. The little todler is so entertaining and joy. I'll baby sit for a bottle of wine. If you have a corkscrew, that would be nice, and just leave a note on the table from your hubby about what mechanical gadgets needs fixed? Can he fix my computer?

My three children give me more joy than pain, but my three year old grandaughter is salvation. Buy some baby peeps for your children. Buy nothing from Wall Street's "Toys 'R' Use-less," I'd recommend. Love that baby to (not literal) death. Listen, and pay total attention. You know. And if that hubby don't do diapers, scrub dishes, and serve you tea while you feel crappy...(hint). Joke. I am too stinky and my truck smells worst than I do.

For sure, they're in a very bad place, both the GOP and the sycophantic Press. Which is why the GOP has increasingly relied on extragovernmental institutions to buttress their movement -- think tanks, reactionary foundations, groups like the Hoover Institution, the Federalist Society and the Council for National Policy (to name a few), private military firms -- they know they're losing the majority of American hearts and minds, so they've worked for the last 30 years to create their own institutions that govern their worldview.

Not a shadow government per se (although they are dreadfully secretive; I wish there were more whistleblowers in their ranks), but a parallel one that nurtures their ideology, protects it from actually having to be tested in the marketplace of ideas -- because they know in their hearts that their ideas will lose out in free and fair elections; that's why they try fearmongering and blame gaming and election fraud and voter suppression to carry the day; they have to, if winning is their goal.

And that's how the GOP creates political "stars" who've never served a day in public office, whose ideas are purely theoretical, who are disconnected from day-to-day reality. Sure, there are politicians who are on board with them, but the number of parallel insitutions that they've created dwarfs the number of actual representatives they have in government.

The Bush administration's ramrodding of the parallel government's agenda down the rest of the country's throat has dire consequences for the mainstream GOP as a party, for sure, but the parallel government will continue -- that was precisely why it was created: they needed something that could resist the threat of democratic elections; they privatized their political movement, in other words. They aren't public servants; they're private servants, and they're not serving the People or the Country, now are they? I think they've always seen elections as an unfortunate inconvenience, anyway.

So, when the GOP gets fried in 2008 (and probably a generation beyond), the parallel government the reactionaries have made will continue; the "movement" will not be undone by this election. They'll just find other ways of expressing themselves politically, unfortunately for the rest of us; I pray they don't get too desperate in their actions, because there are a lot of very wealthy people in their ranks. It sounds very conspiratorial, until you actually enumerate the ideological network that surrounds the GOP, and realize that Hillary was right when she decried the "vast right-wing conspiracy." Government should not be privatized; doing so only makes it accountable to its shareholders, which explains so much in how the Bush League and fellow travelers operate.