Remember the roller coaster ride down thr Red River? Remember the insense sticks of precious herbs dring in the son? Remember the Central Highlands?

The mountain-yard (mispelled, reverently) papa's would help us anti-war GI's walk on red=clouds of smoke? Gads. The burden some carry, stateside too, and O, i got a shush-sensation. Mediddy mung.git/

A Yowsa~!~Love tap. no hate.

DATA- is meaning a DAP Ya's!

Data- is meaning we can still love, unconditionally.

do re.mia- miss.in.action. pickin 'maters for battle.

GG wondered who is saying that Congress violated the 1A by censuring the MoveOn ad. I don't like this sort of "who says" bit, since there tends to be views out there all over the place, even if only a small group supports a certain stance. And, yes, I have seen arguments that the 1A was violated here. In fact, on his weekly appearance on the Thom Hartmann show, Sen. Sanders (I-VT) raised the issue. Does he count?

If Sen. Sanders said that a non-binding resolution violates the First Amendment, then he doesn't really understand what the First Amendment prohibits.

Personally, I think it violates the spirit of the 1A when the Congress officially uses its powers to selectively criticize an organization's speech in this fashion. I think there even might be a R.A.V. v. Paul connection -- selective attacks on hate speech is problematic.

R.A.V. dealt with binding law and punishments for speech - not non-binding condemnations.

As to the fight fire with fire argument ... I admit I don't have the stomach for it. Yes, we aren't talking torture or whatnot here, but as an amateur intellectual, I don't have much chance to torture etc., but I do have some ability to argue and debate. And, this approach is a sin to my intellectual beliefs.

Politics isn't art or philosophy. It's about results. Personally, I think it's a selfish indulgence to stay about the fray to prove how pure and elevated you are, thereby letting reprehensible people and ideas triumph.

Second, our side simply is not as good (thankfully) at this sort of shit.

That's because so many people on that side want to remain above everything.

I find the proposal distasteful, dangerous and a bit naive. Count me out.

I'm sure Rush Limbaugh and Fox will be happy to hear that. MoveOn and future targets of these campaigns will likely not be.

There is nothing noble about unilateral disarmament.

I've been really surprised by the lack of news coming from Iraq ... Juan Cole's daily compilation suggests violence continues, may be growing ... thing are bad ...

The progression of cholera from the north ... reaching Baghdad was the last news I heard on that front ...

Maliki and the rest of the politicians reject the Senate endorsement of "soft partitions" ... upstart ingrates!! who do they think they are?

Are they going to stick with "the surge" strategy until next spring or are they busy formulating some new "post-surge strategy"? I lose track.

war? what war?

Edwards didn't put his campaign on hold and address only the hair "issue". He put an ad on the web and moved on to serious issues.

And as a result, people have stopped talking about Edwards' hair, right?

I read several liberal blogs, and I've read a lot more about the ad and Congress's reaction to it than I have about what was actually said in the hearing. MoveOn wanted to focus attention on Petraeus's lies. The right wanted to distract the world, including us, from what Petraeus said.

If only blogs didn't talk about the MoveOn issue, the focus in the media would have returned to all the high-minded political dialogue about the war which normally happens?

The right won.

What did they "win"?

I completely agree with Greenwald that those of us who are not fans of the Bush administration's neoconservative agenda adopt political tactics in which "a corrupt standard is applied equally rather than allow it to be applied by one political faction against another."

What Greenwald describes as "the war-hungry Right," can also be described as the out-of-control Right, thanks to our Congress abdicating its responsibilities to uphold the Constitution and to participate fully and meaningfully in our system of checks and balances, and assuming the unbelievably outrageous responsibility of formally censuring the exercise of our free speech rights by our citizens.

A tried-and-true method to teach people something, is to create a scenario for them to discover the truth themselves about the something the teacher is leading them toward. This is why I wholehearted support Greenwald's words: "Taking the corrupt political tactics wielded by the war-hungry Right and applying those same tactics to them (rather than ineffectively protesting the unfairness of the tactics) is the only way to ensure they cease."

We're probably watching the first test of the Bush administration's last attempt at a strategy to escape responsability for the defeat in the Iraq war. For chauvinistic war-monglers like Bush, Cheney et al, losing a war is the biggest disgrace imaginable. So the most important thing for them now, is to to try at any price to avoid being labeled the aministration that lost the war, and knowing them, nothing is going to be too dirty to escape responsibilty, and be able to blame someone else. Since they wouldn't get away with blaming the military as a whole (as Hitler did, saying they had been too weak and had deserved to loose), the now have gone for the generals. "It wasn't our fault!" THEY lost the war! The generals did it! Traitors! TRAITORS!"

Disgraceful.

I let them shrinks know what fer. Them don't care. They gots machine guns full of fluoxitine and bupropion and nortriptyline and they meltin' their barrels shootin' up all comers. They got stuff make you moon walk backwards from N.J. to San Francisco like Michael Jackson. Better living through chemistry, but no home grown red hand grenades to munch with salt and pepper spray.

But speakin' of San Francisco. Be sure to wear some agent orange-resistant flowers in your hairs. Out there at Ft. Miley VAMC at the end of the Geary St. bus line, past the Presidio, you'll get service with a smile and the view ain't New Jersy, but it's passible good Pacific Ocean and Golden Gate nostalgia for a time long ago when the air was clean and sex was dirty.