Oh, and doubledave - this country has come back from worse. -- BigTuna

What the heck are you talking about? What could you possibly be comparing the current situation to? We may make an economic comeback but we have never been in this bad of a position politically before. Never.

This is exactly what I was referring to in my last post. This willingness to forget everything once people perceive that "things are looking up."

What is astonishing to me is that McCain is the "small government conservative" and Obama is the "big government liberal". Orwell rules.

Every time I hear McCain start a sentence, "My Friends....." all I can see is my stepsons conscripted into uniforms to enhance profits for multinational conglomerates.

There is no way for the present policies to be continued without additional manpower in the military. National Security is just that, and our policies continue to make us less safe, each and every day.

Yeah, none of this stuff really matters until we hold an executive to account for their illegality. Impeachment should be the only thing being discussed. It should dominate the national discourse. Everything else is just hacking at the leaves.

I've come of the opinion as of late that we have a system of government that is almost architected to avoid the unpleasantries of discovery and accountability, and thus destined to reap perpetual malfeasance because of it.

Two, four, and six year terms are all too short to provide any sense of urgency for a forced removal of a recalcitrant politician. The process of recognizing the indiscretion and subsequently getting it elevated in public discourse over the breaches of naivety put you too close to the end of any term in existing elected positions. The consensus attitude becomes one of a waiting game. If we ignore the problem long enough it will go away on its own, because we can eventually elect someone else.

You can get all the supposed benefits of forced removal, an opportunity to democratically select a replacement, and all you have to do is hold your nose for a while.

If you couple this with a tacit acceptance of an extra-societal ruling-class, then it ought to be no wonder why accountability and politics don't intersect frequently.

is very telling. She admits to having had a case of hero-worship.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/me-and-mccain-hero-worshi_b_100378.html

[...]
But hero-worship dies hard, which is why it took so long for me to see that the man who had been willing to take on his own party and redefine what it meant to be a "loyal Republican," who stood up for his beliefs in campaign finance reform and his opposition to unconscionable tax cuts and even more unconscionable torture, was no more.

It's why I described his fall as Shakespearean (and, speaking of the Bard, hearing the invective spewing from the McCain camp in response to my post, "thou doth protest too much, methinks" leaps to mind).

This isn't Mitt Romney we're talking about, folks -- a man for whom pandering and flip flopping fit like a perfectly tailored suit. This is John McCain, a man whose personal history, in the words of Newsweek in 2000, "makes the other presidential candidates look like pygmies" -- and who, at one time, before he held a fire sale on his principles (Everything Must Go!), was ennobled by that history and had the chance to become that rarest of things -- a real leader.

Jim Lippard of the Lippad Blog attended a talk of Healy's

http://lippard.blogspot.com/2008/05/gene-healy-on-cult-of-presidency.html

He notes that Hillary Clinton has stated she is prepared to be Command in Chief of he economy. I know that's unrelated to this post but I just thought it significnt.

Re: McCain and the judiciary.

He's hitting the neoconservative dog whistle pretty hard.

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/06/saving-democracy-from-independent.html

In my view, the neoconservative enthusiasm for radical democracy has two sources. First, it is rooted in the hope and the gamble that the people are likely to be more conservative than their "parchment regime"—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. And if the last two presidential elections are any indication, this may well be true. Second, neoconservatives are hostile to America’s liberal traditions. They are smart enough to recognize that there is a gulf between democracy and liberty, and that the former can be used to defeat the latter. They are clever enough to grasp the self-refuting nature of democracy.

Conservatives understand that people are vulnerable to manipulation and can easily be made to turn against their own liberties. If the people can be convinced that liberty leads to licentiousness, children out of wedlock, drug addiction, prostitution, and rampant crime, and if they can be convinced that liberty also undermines national security, they will gladly rid themselves of liberty. In short, the neoconservative enthusiasm for democracy has its source in the very real possibility that democracy can be the most powerful instrument in the destruction of the liberal regime.

--Shadia Drury

...and i'm not saying there was a lot -- though he had moments of lucidity in this age of republican unreason -- has long since been tossed overboard as he buys into the idea that the only way to have a chance to win in november is to rally a base and expect his surrogates in the media and elsewhere to frag the democrat relentlessly.

to be fair, mccain has always been a mix of boilerplate conservatism and just natural dumbness. what he didn't get the memo on-- how these days it's ok for repubs to support deficits, and torture, and preemptive war -- he came around to.

there's no there there. that's why his g.o.p. handlers are so furiously trying to present him as a likable hero. policies don't matter when character is king. (never mind he can't pass that sniff test, either.)

Bush's intent all along was NOT to make a radically conservative activist court. It was to NEUTER the court. Alito, Scalia, Roberts & Co. are more than happy to accommodate that.

-- Electro Robot

You are lying, Robotila. Even the most cursory review of your comments (just press the "Read Other Letters" button) shows the exact oppisite.