Looks like the Dred Scott decision is making a run for the money at Neville Chamberlain as the main thing conservatives have heard about in history. Where once we were treated to constant and highly suspect analogies to WWII (i.e. Baghdad is the Munich of our time) now we are getting more and more Civil War analogies (i.e. 'abortionists' are the new slave-holders). This from people whose power base openly runs Confederate flags; and whose party always yields to racist innuendo in a pinch. (Member that Harold Ford ad?)

Save me from these silly, superficial analogies!

What about all the good that slavery produced? Silly - I don't mean in the US I mean in the 3CP, Salon's shining city on the hill.

We're slowly losing a war in Afganistan because we're bogged down in a catastrophic disaster in Iraq. Our soldiers are losing their lives and limbs. Iraqis are being killed by the score, and its a situation that is threatening our national security. Billions of our tax dollars are going to well connected contractor cronies and mercenaries. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Mortgage foreclosures are skyrocketing. We may be on the verge of recession. Healthcare? The two party system has corroded to the point where it seems nothing can get done. The current adminstration has wipe its ass on the Constitution. We're ever more dependant on foriegn oil, and no viable alternative is on the reasonable horizon. Global warming...oh, and New Orleans is still trashed.

But abortion, gay bashing and porn videos are all these idiots are concerned with?

... they'd be arguing in favor of - not against - slavery, as it's endorsed implicitly and explicitly in both the Old and New Testaments. Of course, they'd also be calling for a ban on virtually all divorces and on the eating of shellfish, and would endorse celibacy over marriage.

I seriously wonder if these people can even read.

if everything is softballed at these candidates, no wonder this country is in the mess it is in.

why is the US Govt in the business of legislating abortion and gay marriage anyway? These should be state rights.

For the record I am for the equivalent of gay marriage (but not using the loaded term 'gay marriage'). Call it anything else and it would have been fine.

And I am pro choice up to the end of the first trimester.

But to try to isolate these questions as the musings of sick minds is unfruitful. Thinking back at where I grew up, in a middle class suburb near a lib East Coast city in a Democratic state, even the democrat leaning people I knew and still know had a problem with 'gay marriage' and abortion into the third trimseter.

I am starting to believe the public debate IS being controlled by the ultra lib internationalists who really DO want to destroy American morality as a prelude to a nanny state.

OUGHT to be ignored. They're the lunatic fringe and it was time we started treating them as such.

What a clot of unchristian Pompous Pilates they assembled under one circus tent there. Foetus worshippers, Confederacy idolators, and men far too worked up over teh buttsecks, that's your new American right wing.

Seriously, these people are deeply concerned over this shit that has virtually no impact on anyone's actual quality of life, yet turn a blind eye to the global atrocities we commit as a nation? It's things like this that make me wish Jesus really would come back, if only to straighten out these sheep who think they understand him.

There is American moralism, a half-baked, ill-concieved hysteria built around fear of sex, particularly sex being had by other people. But beyond that, this so-called American morality Mr. "Feminists Ate My Bayyy-beee" Brightstar is so terrified is being destroyed consists of "Christian folk" standing in jackboots on the throats of the poor while they shit on them and cheerlead the deaths of brown people.

I realized these people represent a large "base" of half-witted, ill-informed, bedroom policing, small-minded, self-righteous, rights-limiting, hypocritical, authoritarian biblical automatons who all get to vote.

And those four people, who are more concerned with a cluster of cells than the hundreds of thousands in Iraq being sacrificed at the altar of George W. Bush, just cancelled out my vote, and those of three of my most globally-focused friends.

God help us. Not their God. Our God.

Respectfully, there is a lunatic fringe on all sides. I can easily point out the Andrea Dworkin followers too.

Point I was trying to make was the vast middle does have concerns about these very issues I mentioned. Those are the swing voters, so it does matter.

But frankly, neither party is close to adequate in my mind. Both seek the wrong things, much bigger government, no borders, privileges for the undeserving and criminal (illegal immigrants anyone?) at the expense of hard working Americans, a police state mentality (what happened to that thing called the Constitution?).

Dismiss it, but there is a reason even mainstream Dems are considered fringe by the majority of America.

Really, Ron Paul is the only credible one in the bunch willing to take on the big topics.

"Christian folk" standing in jackboots on the throats of the poor

Nooo, the far left does not have its own jackbooted thugs trying to turn the US into socialist/fascist paradise.

the civil war is coming yet.

the vast midle is appalled at abortion on demand in the third trimester. -- a leftie issue

the vast middle is EQUALLY appalled at open borders and a nanny state. -- a rightie issue

we really need a third party that represents the needs of the plurality of America sitting in the middle shocked at the bullshit going on in this country on both sides.

Divine, all knowing entity who knows our deepest desires...A Shining Bright Star!

"why is the US Govt in the business of legislating abortion and gay marriage anyway? These should be state rights."

No, they are Human rights

"And I am pro choice up to the end of the first trimester."

And I believe that Parents should be able to terminate the life of their child until it is 1 month old

"even the democrat leaning people I knew and still know had a problem with 'gay marriage' and abortion into the third trimseter."

East Coast of where?

"I am starting to believe the public debate IS being controlled by the ultra lib internationalists who really DO want to destroy American morality as a prelude to a nanny state."

What the hell is a nanny state, anyway?