Go whine somewhere else, Glenn. Politics is a contact sport. Always has been, always will be.

Your empty-suit ticket got smoked by Sarah Palin last night. And there was substance. She showed that all of Obama's claims are the crock of shit they've always been.

Glenn's response? Wah! Wah! They called us names!

That must be why you are hiding behind a screen on anonymity, I guess. What are you afraid of? Surely you're not worried that if you reveal your real name, you will be retaliated against? The FBI is on Bush's side, after all, so you should have nothing to worry about.

What are you afraid of, really? That goes for all the other anonymous posters here.

Truth be told, many of them are likely employees of the major PR firms, all of whom have fleets of bloggers working the internet non-stop. Edelman, last time they publicly discussed it, said they had at least 30 people on computers around the clock, ready to flood comment sections at the drop of a hat.

Others are simply afraid of being publicly identified and losing their jobs in the corporate arcology. Or, it might hurt their future earnings potential within the corporate system - that's why those "radical anarchists" wear the face masks, isn't it?

Your anonymity is just a myth anyway, what with modern packet sniffers and NSA eavesdropping techniques.

By the way, recall when Glenn Greenwald accidentally wiped his interview with Noam Chomsky? Here is is Avi Lewis interviewing Noam Chomsky on the Iraq war - good stuff, with some interesting quotes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biyK7NgdCDA

That interview does show the lunacy of some on the left. Chomsky discussed a left-wing historian who hoped that Bush would win because that would lead to a collapse of the imperial project. This is the leftist version of right-wing Rapture: Waiting for The Revolution. That's the theme that Democracy Now also appears to champion - work to defeat Democrats so the Republicans win, in the hopes the Republicans will destroy the system with their greed and incompetence, leading to utopia...

So sad, really. The fact is that people who identify and define themselves with simple labels like "left" or "right" or "liberal" or "conservative" are nothing but brainwashed victims of the U.S. propaganda system.

Yours, Ike Solem

Freedom of speech - use it or lose it.

Judging by Different Yardsticks

On the Left and in the Center, one wins an argument by introducing the most salient points and supporting those points with evidence. On the Right, one wins an argument by calling the opponent the most vile names and generally screaming louder.

LoL. You certainly haven't found that here. In fact I'm copying commenters own brutal personality and cultural attacks as I go along, and will post theem shortly. I think. So far I'm still on the first page and have four quotes. Stand by for a lot more.

Newcomer? Read my letter history, fool. Starting from the earliest posts. Noob.

The campaign and key Democrats will keep their hands clean until Biden decks her at the debates, on substantive issues. It will be easy for him, and I think he can pull it off.

She'll rip his head off and hand it back to him. She just needs to point out that despite Obama's claim to bring "change," Biden is as old-school Washington as they come. Same tired politics, same tired excuses.

The guy could barely scrape up 1% support the two times he ran for president precisely because he has nothing to offer.

You people seriously misjudge Sarah Palin.

Now go stamp your feet and whine along with Glenn Greenwald.

Sarah Palin lied many times in her speech last night. The repubs do not really have much choice. -- Mike Sulzer

Excuse me, what lies are those? Too lazy to list them out?

She showed that all of Obama's claims are the crock of shit they've always been.

You mean the collection of brazen, outright lies she recited last night?

You have me genuinely puzzled now. Exactly how did she "show" anything beyond what a decent speaker she is? There was nothing useful or substantive in that speech they had written for her.

And I'm wondering if you even read Glenn's original post. Did you, or are you trying to replace the unlamented Bart as the serial contrarian here?

That must be why you are hiding behind a screen on anonymity, I guess. What are you afraid of? Surely you're not worried that if you reveal your real name, you will be retaliated against? --CargoCult

Please say hello to everyone in the Cult family for me, Cargo.

The Western White House

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Wasilla_City_Hall.jpg

Newcomer? Read my letter history, fool. Starting from the earliest posts. Noob. -- red_gti2000

It must be something great if you're willing to throw your self-esteem away like this.

Go on, tell us.

You'll note CargoCult signs his name, Ike Solem, below his posts.

Kitt: It was only meant to seem like an idle question. It wasn't. David Addington controls or controlled the input to Dick Cheney who in turn controls the input to George W. Bush. The man is very scary, and is the driving force behind such things as the torture program, the spying program, and the unitary executive drive. He does most of what he does by dominating discussions by presence.

We know that John McCain is no good at that game, witness Licoln Federal Savings, or the way he got taken on the MCA 2006 (Personally, I think being broken in Hanoi is part of the problem, but that is just a conjecture). By all indications, Sarah Palin is a loyalty freak, like Bush. She will be controlled, not a controller. So electing these people essentially turns the government over to David Addington, or someone just like him. John McCain and Sarah Palin are just Nicholas and Alexandra.

Iokannian: WADR, there may have been cowboys involved in Dera Ismail Khan, but no Indians ;-). The issue has been brewing since February, and the move wasn't just a dimwitted move, but rather a fully Bob Gates backed statement on Pakistani sovereignty. The Pakistani military says it screws their relations with tribals not aligned with the Taliban, with Kashmir coincidentally heating up it isn't a very good time to declare that all borders are whatever a guy with an army says they are. The U.S. has a lot of irons in the fire there, and one of them is they want a Pakistani strongman, preferably one who won't reinstate any judges (hence the importance of the Siddiqui case as a poster child).

This was a clear statement that the Bush administration does not, de facto, recognize the sovereignty of the democratically elected government in Pakistan.

The ISI, possibly due to Kayani's bid to stay out of government, has kinda consolidated a lot of their proxy groups under the Taliban umbrella group run by Baitullah Mehsud. Weird groups -- suddenly groups that spent years infiltrating Kashmir (e.g. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi) are "members" of al Qaeda. Not so coincidentally, suicide bombs (which Carlotta Gall had accurately reported in 2006 were mostly instigated by the ISI, not the Taliban) are hitting targets like the Indian Embassy in Kabul.

It's one thing to tread cautiously while the Pakistani situation hangs in the balance for month after month -- the Indians are doing that, and their intelligence in the region is far better than the U.S. It's another thing to go in, like a bull in the china shop, like the U.S. is doing, and assert U.S. primacy. Was there approval from Congress for sending the military into another sovereign state?

McCain-Palin has no ability to stand up to browbeating, and no clue on foreign policy. The situation brewing in Central and South Asia demands a lot of attention, on a constant basis. John McCain and Sarah Palin wouldn't know Dera Ismail Khan from Kiyomizu Dera. The question for every voter this fall, with respect to Pakistan, is: Is this the kind of situation you want David Addington to decide for you? He is the unannounced Rasputin on the Republican ticket.