It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. So the story goes. Elliot Spitzer and "Kristen" had their good times, and now they are havin their worst. The worst, in this case, are the result of media glare, however, and not the seemingly "usual" result of their mutual behavior.

And the mutually consenting nature of their behavior is a boiler plate for a renewed discussion on the legality of prostitution.

First, I must say, I am no fan of prostitution. It's not that I judge prostitutes. Or johns. It's that I don't think it's the best relationship for anyone involved, directly or indirectly. Prostitution hurts families, wives, husbands, girlfriends, boyfriends, children...

But the argument that it hurts neighborhoods and burdens law enforcement is merely a function of the illegality of the act.

I wholly dismiss the verbose feminist argument that prostitution hurts women as a whole. The prostitute is a willing party, acting entirely for her own economic advantage. As in the case of Kristen, prostitutes sell their wares because they gain an economic advanage by so doing; they simply make more money by selling sex than they would by flipping burgers, or by any other job for which they might be qualified. Otherwise, they wouldn't do it.

I wholly dismiss the Bronze Age, biblical admonition that men who buy sex offend God. I think they offend their wives, but God does not judge the john any more than he judges the alcoholic: as merely a sick person.

And that's the way I see it. Alcohol is legal because we found out, as a culture, that illegalisation was not a solution to willing, non-victimising, behavior. That which does not involve theft of property or violence unto a person (or sometimes an animal) is generally a "victimless crime". These so-called crimes need to be decriminalised. Prostitution needs to be legal, albeit regulated and contained.

I'm not saying Elliot Spitzer is innocent; he is not. Spitzer's hypocrisy, and his betrayal of the peoples' trust is cause enough for his resignation; however, he should not be prosecuted, because prosecution of an act, regardless of the legal status of the act, is unconscionable in the case of two mutually consenting adults engaging in an act that neither perpetrates violence against another, nor steals property from another.

I will bet there are holes in my argument as stated. To give credence to this subject would surely entail a book-length post. But there are two tails in this story, two asses in slings, and neither need be as such. Elliot Spitzer sold his career for a piece of ass, and Kristen unwittingly sold her anonymity. But both made their choices, without the involvement of anyone else, and the legal system needs to stay out of it.

That doesn't mean the voters don't have a say, though. But that's a moot point now. For the future, however, we need to legalise prostitution, because illegalising the behavior of two mutually consenting adults that does not violate the rights of another is, morally and ethically, not the business of government.

I'll start with the standard disclaimer: I don't usually do this, but...

I'm all for investigations, not only will we uncover the leaker of Classified information to the NYT I think in review of the history of this war to date, it appears that the Democrats sure did put a lot of bank into things going bad in Iraq. Starting with the 04 campaign season in fact, starting shortly after we had taken Baghdad. How could they possibly know things were going to deteriorate? The highly successful major combat operations were over within days, Saddam and most of his cronies were captured or killed and our Generals started to move forward with a reconstruction plan. Are the Democrats such good prognosticators that they figured out Iraq would become in John Kerry's words (Beirut) or did they use an old tried and true trick, you know the one, the same one that Ted Kennedy tried to use against Reagan, by coordinating with the KGB. Only this time those clairvoyant liberals coordinated with Al-Sadr or Ahmadnijad. Should investigations be held? Do we have terrorists in the midst of Congress?

1 posted on 11/12/2006 5:40:57 PM PST by tomnbeverly

ROFLMFAO. This is the funniest post I have EVER read! How did we know Iraq would deteriorate? Learning from history and putting 2 and 2 together is impossible; we must have caused the deterioration with a secret plan to undermine Bush by allying with terrorists!

Hey, dipshit, EVERYONE WITH AT LEAST TWO FUNCTIONING BRAIN CELLS KNEW IRAQ WOULD END UP A MESS. YOU DIDN'T NEED A DOCTORATE IN FOREIGN POLICY. YOU DIDN'T NEED ANY INSIDE INFO. I knew it was an intractable fiasco in the making, and that's why I was against the war from the beginning. Asshat. I tried to tell as many of you as I could before the war, but you didn't listen. But that couldn't be it. I must be in contact with Al Qaeda. Definitely.

Has anyone else noticed that the news, CNN, MSNBC, newspapers, etc., have been showing more about the Iraq War, actual footage and actual in-depth analysis of what's happening on the ground, since Tuesday (election day)? It sure seems like it to me.

My take: the news outlets waited for "permission" from the American people to report the news. This means they're not doing their job and have become a political entity(ies). How cowardly! They should have been showing this footage of people getting killed and injured, the real human cost of this war, every day! I am sickened that they have waited so long to start showing THE NEWS!

I have, in my short time participating IN (not on) Democratic Underground, gotten sucked into many a knock-down, drag-out argument. Sometimes these arguments were disguised as polite debates; other times, they were neither disguised nor polite. It's more the latter type that I wish to address now.

I must first say, it's nice to have a place where I can go to seek refuge and find people who agree with me on nearly every issue. But it's somehow even more reassuring when I find people who disagree with me on some issue or other, only to meet up with them in another thread where all our past differences are put aside in unity for a common cause. Suddenly we both see the Big Picture. Suddenly we both remember that we did not sign up and go through the 24-hour waiting period to do combat on when 'outing' gays is OK, whether the 2nd Amendment guarantees the right for an individual to carry a firearm, whether Stephen Colbert is "a great satirist or The Greatest satirist?"

Suddenly we remember there are forces at work out there in the world that would not allow us to disagree, not allow dissent, not allow debate, no matter how polite. It is these forces -- the Bush Administration and its ilk in Congress and throughout the country -- that seek to bulldoze those sometimes-petty nuances over which I, admittedly, vehemently wrangle with other DUers.

It is affirming that democracy is alive, and that dissent is well, that so many so diverse in background and belief come together, united in common cause, to nitpick grammar and punctuation on Tangent Z (sub7) of Digression Y (sub3) of Topic X, where X is an unverified opinion of an anonymous poster on an internet website. I know the future is in good hands with so many well-informed, intelligent, dynamic people engaging in passionate discourse against the tsunami of dictatorial power trying to wipe out our right to think, speak, and act for ourselves.

I may sound drunk, or like I got my Xanax prescription filled today, but neither is the case. My feelings of well-being are genuine (and not drug induced). I am no longer afraid of the totalitarian oppression of jackbooted thugs and wannabe (or real!) dictators. It is largely because of this website, the democratic underground dot com, that I feel a sense of strength in opposing the gathering storm(troopers). I know that there are so many of us who will not tolerate the removal of our right to speak our minds on the trivial, the inane, and even the subversive and controversial.

So, it is with honest gratitude, a deep sense of brotherhood and unity, and, indeed, feelings of agape, that I celebrate the diversity of opinion in this web-based community. From adversity comes DUversity. And from DUversity comes strength.

Our time in coming. Then we can fight over the merits of veganism versus fruitarianism in relative peace.

Until then, stay strong.

The Democratic Party has two wings, as daily demonstrated by some of the many conflicts on liberal blogs. We all know the arguments; "so-and-so is not liberal enough" versus "you only help the Republicans with talk like that". Soon enough, the issue of helping Republicans will not even be on the radar screen as Democrats begin to win election after election.

With Ned Lamont's primary victory tonight, coupled with the victory of a staunch conservative over a moderate incumbent in the Michigan primary, the great divide in the American political landscape has never been so wide. But all the evidence -- Bush's popularity polls circling the drain, American opinion on the Iraq War, opinions on health care issues, stem cell research, the list goes on -- suggest that the vast majority of the American people support the platform on which the Democratic Party stands, or at least those prominent planks on which the entire liberal blogosphere agrees. But then there's the other Left foot -- the Democratic Party platform we don't all agree on.

Are we, as Democrats, supportive of business? Are we capitalist, or socialist-lite? Do Americans have a right to create wealth? Do we have a right to retain our culture? Do we owe the world, as opposed to own it?

Regarding foreign policy, now that the neoconservative doctrine of preemption is fully discredited, will our foreign policy return to the Clintonian tacit doctrine of proportional response and humanitarian intervention? Or will we rebuke and reject the next president who engages in any "foreign entanglements" whatsoever?

I'm not even going to mention Israel.

Fully expect the dynamics of public opinion to be much different from the Clinton years: the neocon star is no longer on the rise, the Contract on America has been cancelled, the Reagan Revolution overthrown. Also we are much more hip to the tricks of Faux News and potential Scaifian operatives. It will be much harder next time around to trip up a Democratic leadership from the outside. But will we trip over our own two left feet?

We of the political Left in the blogiverse of liberalism, have led the way, been far ahead of the curve in calling a duck a duck. We said in 2000 that Bush looked like a duck, walked like a duck, and quacked like a duck, so he was definitely a duck. (We were only one letter off.) We have become accustom to being relevant because we knew. We had one thing we could agree on -- that George W. Bush was wrong on everything -- and we knew we were right. And always, within a few months or a few years, polls of likely voters started to swing our way, and we felt vindicated. But that pattern may end soon. We may find ourselves relegated to the scrapheap of irrelevance as the general populace fully accepts our positions on those issues we agree upon already, and the only things we have left to talk about are those things we on which we already disagree. Where do we go when the only thing left to talk about is whether we support our own president and legislature? (Any interesting discussion will be against DU policy!) What will be our unifying force?

The fact is, the only places I see the more "socialist" end of the spectrum being espoused is on college campus and websites like this one. It's not likely that most Americans will continue to follow the lead of leftwing websites beyond Democratic policies of Clinton. We may take an invasion of Venezuala off the table as bizarre fanatacism in defiance of the autonomy of a democratically elected government, but that does not mean a future American president will be photographed hugging Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez.

Hopefully we as a nation have grown up a bit during the Bush administration, and will never again buy into a farce like preemption ever again, and moreover reject any further attempt at post-colonial imperialism. But the vast majority of American people will not take the lesson of Iraq as meaning that we cannot intervene somewhere militarily with good reason. For that reason, the divisions rife on liberal websites could well render those websites largely irrelevant.

Americans are beginning to realize that they are, by and large, liberals. And right now that means, essentially, being Democrats. But eventually conservatives will adapt to survive, like they always have, and co-opt the liberal-progressive agenda and, like a dormant virus, hide their own agenda within it.

We will soon have a chance not seen since the 1960's to forward a real progressive agenda, but perhaps not for long. With political victory comes the responsibility of governance. Let's not shoot ourselves in the foot because it's the "wrong" left foot. Now is the time for a collective growth spurt in this petit coup d'etat of left-wing bloggers. Our survival as such may well depend on it.

Let's start finding ways right now to keep a coalition together once Democrats are in power.

On the night Stephen Colbert gave his now-famous WH Press Dinner Speech televised on C-SPAN, I went against the grain and posted that I thought Colbert flopped. Many on DU that night argued vehemently with me, but I held my ground admirably. I was sure Colbert flopped, even though I thought he was right on target.

Though an avid fan of TDS and TCR, I felt that Colbert's inability to reach his live audience that night would doom the performance to MSM misinterpretation and Stephen would become a target of ridicule. And you know what? I WAS RIGHT. For a week or so, at least.

But since then Colbert's performance has caught fire with the masses who usually don't watch C-SPAN (i.e. unlike most of us DUers). I've seen reports on DU that the performance is the number ONE(here and here) download on I-tunes. The MSM tried, but could not relegate Colbert's scathing satire to the discount bin with used Rodney Dangerfield 8-tracks. (No respect.)

I WAS WRONG. Oh, how wrong I was. And I must apologize. Not for voicing my heart-felt opinion, but for underestimating the power and the intelligence of the people.

Here's the irony: I've been writing political pieces on DU for the last few months saying that I believe that their is a real grassroots phenomenon occurring, and that "alternative" news sources are going to overcome the MSM propaganda machine in the next few years. Then, with Colbert, I fall prey to pessimism. But the people proved me wrong.

I don't know when I've ever been so happy to be so wrong.

Congratulations on getting the word out. Congratulations on be willing to take a chance once in a while.

Fact is, regardless of whether or not truthout was correct or not, it's not a that big a deal to me whether someone gets a story wrong in good faith once in a while. I don't really care if so-and-so at such-and-such website got "Rathered" by Repubs. I also don't care if Bob hates Mary and wants to trash her reputation. I don't care if Chuck flames Fred in a late-night drunken rant. I don't care if Mark prints something that Jimmy regrets. I'm so far out of the loop that I can't be seen with the naked eye, and all that stuff looks like inconsequential infighting to me.

There will surely be prophets of doom and gloom, naysayers who jump ship at various points and times. They will set out on their own, with a resentment and a domain name, and they will carve out their own cyber homestead. Good for 'em!

But there's no way we're going to be brought down from the outide. THE GENIE CANNOT BE PUT BACK IN THE BOTTLE. We, the overly opinionated readers of blogiverse, have become too addicted to actual NEWS to go back to the information desert from whence we came. We need our news sooner than it happens! We crave knowing like the drowning crave a breath of air, and WE CAN'T GET IT FROM THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA. Even if truthout got a story wrong, I'm not running back to the MSM to be fed pablum and be patted on the head and be told, in Jon Stewart's most snide cartoon voice, "Now run along."

I know that ONLY the blogosphere respects me, and because of that they get my respect: DU, truthout, Kos, Raw Story, Talking Points Memo, democrats.com... you know who they are.

Maybe the most important thing about all this to me is that I don't know anyone. I don't know the people who run these websites, or anyone who even writes for them. It's just not personal to me, and honestly, when 'Facelessname007' flames 'Someguy41' with lots of inside knowledge and personal info, I read as subtext, "Look at me! I have inside knowledge and want to show off! Whoopee!"

So someone I will never meet from some place I will never visit knows something I don't know about someone else I will never meet from someplace I will never visit...

Umm, hooray?

Some names have been changed to protect ME from getting caught up in all the personal pettiness. I don't care who scoops whom from my vantage point 7.5 light years from the outer-most edges of anything remotely resembling THE LOOP. So I'll be back tomorrow, no matter what, to see what's actually happening in the world today.

Thanks.

There are two strategies to get our message out: 1) speak the truth, 2) stop the right-wing propaganda butt-cold before it spreads into mainstream discourse. The following post is an example of the latter strategy:

There's a cut-and-pasted meme running like a virus around right-wing websites today that really irked me. They're trying to explain Bush's terrible poll numbers, and are using all the usual right-wing tricks of the trade. I found this reply to a blog post to be a typical example of the right-wing talking points being used today to explain Bush's terrible poll numbers.

May 12, 2006



Let's examine these claims one at a time:

Iraq is now safer than the streets of Detroit or Washington DC

This claim has been passed around on right-wing websites since at least Fall, 2003. Whether this claim is important or not is debatable, but is it even true? The claim seems to originate from right-winger and NRA apologist John Lott in July, 2003. Ever the opportunistic damned liar, Lott compared murders in Washington, DC to US combat-related deaths, and not all deaths in Baghdad. In September of 2003, the L.A. Times wrote:

“The number of reported gun-related killings in Baghdad has increased 25-fold since President Bush declared an end to major combat May 1. Before the war began, the morgue investigated an average of 20 deaths a month caused by firearms. In June, that number rose to 389 and in August it reached 518. Moreover, the overall number of suspicious deaths jumped from about 250 a month last year to 872 in August.”

So before the Iraq War Baghdad was safer than D.C., but the U.S. invasion certainly made it less safe, and definitely less safe for Americans. Iraq has become progressively more violent and less stable since 2003, and still passing off this lie as truth is even more egregious today than it was three years ago.

Unemployment is at an all time low

Year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Annual
1996 5.6 5.5 5.5 5.6 5.6 5.3 5.5 5.1 5.2 5.2 5.4 5.4
1997 5.3 5.2 5.2 5.1 4.9 5.0 4.9 4.8 4.9 4.7 4.6 4.7
1998 4.6 4.6 4.7 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.5 4.5 4.6 4.5 4.4 4.4
1999 4.3 4.4 4.2 4.3 4.2 4.3 4.3 4.2 4.2 4.1 4.1 4.0
2000 4.0 4.1 4.0 3.8 4.0 4.0 4.0 4.1 3.9 3.9 3.9 3.9
2001 4.2 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.3 4.5 4.6 4.9 5.0 5.3 5.5 5.7
2002 5.7 5.7 5.7 5.9 5.8 5.8 5.8 5.7 5.7 5.7 5.9 6.0
2003 5.8 5.9 5.9 6.0 6.1 6.3 6.2 6.1 6.1 6.0 5.9 5.7
2004 5.7 5.6 5.7 5.5 5.6 5.6 5.5 5.4 5.4 5.4 5.4 5.4
2005 5.2 5.4 5.1 5.1 5.1 5.0 5.0 4.9 5.1 4.9 5.0 4.9
2006 4.7 4.8 4.7 4.7
http://data.bls.gov /

I see lots of numbers in there lower than 4.7, so clearly this claim is untrue. I highlighted the month with the actual lowest unemployment in the last ten years. Hey, wasn't that during the Clinton Administration?

Employment is at an all time high

This is true, but only in the sense that also makes unemployment at an all-time high. It's a meaningless statement of raw data. It's true that there have never been as many people employed in the US as there are today. This fact, however, is due to the increase in population, and is meaningless as far as an economic indicator. The number of people ‘not in labor force’ has increased, too, commensurate to the increase in population times the employment rate, the rate being the only meaningful measure of employment, and even that has been redefined to come out rosier for the economy.
ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/suppl/empsit.cpseea1...

Al Qaida is decimated and on the run

A web search on this claim comes up with hundreds of hits from May, 2003. Clearly someone is trying to pass off some old information as current. The fact is, Bin Laden is still alive almost five years after 9/11, and Al Qaeda in Iraq is still killing Iraqis and Americans. No reliable statistics are available to substantiate the claim that Al Qaeda is decimated or on the run, but the mere fact that they are still around, harrying the world’s preeminent military power -- still killing Americans! -- should be enough to render this claim ridiculous.

No terrorist incidents in the US for 3.5 years

Obviously someone is passing around some dated information. Wherever this person cut and pasted his information from was about a year and a half old.

Let’s examine the claim anyway.

The Oklahoma City bombing occurred on April 19, 1995, and the next domestic attack was September 11, 2001, so historically one should not expect terrorist attacks only 3.5, or even 5 years apart.

Reports from all over the media have decried the Republican laissez-faire approach to national security, especially in regard to budget cuts for the security of America’s ports:

"But 4 1/2 years after the 9/11 attacks, the supposed danger is almost a distraction from the real work. Congress has done little to advance agreement on better security plans for ports, decide how to reopen ports if an attack occurs or spend more than a fraction of what's needed to reduce threats from conventional, biological or nuclear attacks using cargo."
link

Bush has not made America any safer, so attributing the lack of domestic terror attacks to Bush is spurious.

Federal Tax revenues at an all time high

This is another claim based on unadjusted raw data, and is therefore meaningless. Expenditures are also at an all-time high, too. The US trade deficit has increased under Bush. The national debt has increased under Bush, even when adjusted for GDP growth. The budget deficit is greater under Bush than under any other president in history.

Stock market is at an all time high

Pat Buchanan made this false claim a few weeks ago on Hardball with Chris Matthews, and despite Media Matters' rebuke of him, the claim is still getting passed off as true. The stock market actually hit its all-time high the week before Bush took office, during the Clinton administration.

The stock market should be Bush’s pride and joy, the showpiece of his administration. Bush’s tax cuts have been aimed at the wealthy investor class, and the stock market has been propped up by years of entitlement tax cuts and giveaways. That plan was only a temporary stopgap, however, and corporate profits, the only real bright spot in the Bush economy, are set to fall. In a sense, Bush borrowed against future earnings, like a 1920’s stock speculator, and it’s just about time for the margin call.

Number of high paying jobs is at an all time high

The most recent available statistics from 2003 and 2004 cite manufacturing job loss at 2.5 million, without outsourcing continuing. CBC News reported that high-quality jobs have been replaced with lower quality, lower paying service industry jobs.

Interest rates are at an historical low

Interest rates are not at a historical low. They’re low in an effort to encourage borrowing, but they’ve been lower. In fact they’ve been lower even in the Bush administration, but have steadily risen. Interest rates are set by the Federal Reserve, and since rates are based on an interaction between spending and inflation, they cannot really be used as an objective economic indicator. The fact that interest rates have been so low during the Bush administration could generally be seen as an indication of a potentially moribund economy. Low rates are not necessarily a good thing.

Inflation is at an historical low

Another outright lie. Inflation is near its highest in the last ten years.

YEAR JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC AVE
2006 3.99% 3.60% 3.36%
2005 2.97% 3.01% 3.15% 3.51% 2.80% 2.53% 3.17% 3.64% 4.69% 4.35% 3.46% 3.42% 3.39%
2004 1.93% 1.69% 1.74% 2.29% 3.05% 3.27% 2.99% 2.65% 2.54% 3.19% 3.52% 3.26% 2.68%
2003 2.60% 2.98% 3.02% 2.22% 2.06% 2.11% 2.11% 2.16% 2.32% 2.04% 1.77% 1.88% 2.27%
2002 1.14% 1.14% 1.48% 1.64% 1.18% 1.07% 1.46% 1.80% 1.51% 2.03% 2.20% 2.38% 1.59%
2001 3.73% 3.53% 2.92% 3.27% 3.62% 3.25% 2.72% 2.72% 2.65% 2.13% 1.90% 1.55% 2.83%
2000 2.74% 3.22% 3.76% 3.07% 3.19% 3.73% 3.66% 3.41% 3.45% 3.45% 3.45% 3.39% 3.38%
1999 1.67% 1.61% 1.73% 2.28% 2.09% 1.96% 2.14% 2.26% 2.63% 2.56% 2.62% 2.68% 2.19%
1998 1.57% 1.44% 1.37% 1.44% 1.69% 1.68% 1.68% 1.62% 1.49% 1.49% 1.55% 1.61% 1.55%
1997 3.04% 3.03% 2.76% 2.50% 2.23% 2.30% 2.23% 2.23% 2.15% 2.08% 1.83% 1.70% 2.34%
1996 2.73% 2.65% 2.84% 2.90% 2.89% 2.75% 2.95% 2.88% 3.00% 2.99% 3.26% 3.32% 2.93%
1995 2.80% 2.86% 2.85% 3.05% 3.19% 3.04% 2.76% 2.62% 2.54% 2.81% 2.61% 2.54% 2.81%

http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflati...

Only 1 administration official is under indictment compared to 61 Clinton administration officials under indictment

You know as soon as a conservative mentions Clinton that a litany of lies will ensue, and much bile will be disgorged. I did some research, and there’s an easily cut and pasted list of Clinton administration “high crimes and misdemeanors” floating around out there. Some of the claims originate from this website. The problem is that trying to keep freeper-types honest about Clinton is like trying to nail Jell-o to a tree. They are pathological when it comes to Clinton. So the problem with researching "Clinton and indictments" on the Internet is that you hit 100,000 pages of right-wing paranoid vitriol. The nature of the Republican-manufactured crises and scandals on the 1990's is well-documented, and would be redundant here. All I have to say is that Fitz has only just begun, and the repugnant stench of the Bush administration is soon going to foul the air of every home across America.

Think of it this way: Bush's approval rating is at 29% BEFORE the bulk of his scandals come to light. Once they do, anyone still passing around garbage propaganda for the Bush administration is going to get a one-way ticket to the funny farm.

Conservatives are lining up to bash the president on his spending, spying, and immigration stance, and they're not bothering to wait behind the Democrats who've been bashing Bush for years. So does this bipartisan Bush-bashing mean the Democrats are finally in a position to win an election this year?

Watch closely as Republican talking heads are trying to throw a curve ball by us: Scarborough recently HAMMERED Bush, but made sure to spread the blame to two other entities, namely the phone companies and the DEMOCRATIC Congresspersons. Not the Republicans. He blames the Democrats, and Pelosi by name, for not telling us about the NSA spying before now.

Yeah, Scarborough is just full of shit. Democrats in Congress have been shut out of the information loop since 2001, and they don't have the power to change things anyway. And Republicans want to keep it that way.

Keep your eye on the ball, people. Bush-bashing gets us nothing if balloonheads can manage to hold back the Republican hemorrhaging seats in Congress. They're greasing the ball. They're going with the flow and blaming Bush and the Democrats in Congress, and a lot of us are swinging at a ball in the dirt because of our longstanding hatred of Bush.

The Republicans' newfound dislike of Bush is disingenuous. They know which way the wind blows, and they're not going to spit into it. But remember, Bush isn't up for reelection. Congress is. And if Republican shills can manipulate the distribution of blame for the crises of the last five years equally, the Repubs just might win the seats they need to keep Congress. Remember they don't need to win the majority of seats up for grabs this time around. Winning a few will be enough to keep them, and Bush, in power for another two, long, agonizing years.

Republican talking heads are trying to tar Democrats with a Scarlet "I". The talking point coming out of Repub Central is to scare voters away from the angry, radical Democrats by accusing them of planning to impeach the president. Russert and Matthews are both doing their jobs as Republican shills, this week uploading that message into water cooler political discourse. It's just about all they have right now, and the strategy reeks of desperation:

First, it's a tacit admission of Bush's failure, that they would impeach him if the tables were turned. That's what passes for Republican honesty these days, as we already know this. Case in point: they impeached Clinton for a lot less.

Second, it's weak, but it could work. Republicans only need to keep a quarter or so of their most hotly contested seats in Congress to maintain their majority. That's not all that hard if they can detach themselves from Bush's coattails.

So I watched Russert grill Nancy Pelosi on Sunday, goading her into admitting that the Democrats are angry, spiteful, vengeful Bush-haters, who would no sooner get into office than proceed with impeachment hearings. He just wouldn't accept Pelosi's answer that impeachment is not at the top of the Democrats' agenda.

Now li'l sis Buchanan is out there representin' those fine, upstanding conservatives who have been let down by Bush's liberalism, but are on guard for Demo-liberal chicanery against their president:

(Buchanan) said if House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi continued to appear on TV and talk about impeachment hearings and investigating the Republican leadership, she would turn people off because she was out of touch.

It's the old act-like-you-got-the-answer-you-wanted trick. When snide, thinly disguised partisanship on the part of so-called journalists doesn't work, just continue on as if.

Expect that tactic to continue through the rest of this year. Given that Republicans are good at manipulation, better than the Democrats are at countering it, perhaps the Dems should pivot and do an end-around the Republican line: embrace impeachment and let Republicans call them angry and radical. With Bush's polls chugging backwash, Repubs are effectively calling the vast majority of Americans angry radicals.

I understand that it doesn't work that way. Attribution Error ensures that my anger is justified, while yours is just unseemly, even if we're angry over the same thing. But if addressed early enough, it could be rendered an ineffective criticism as people become acclimated to the idea that, yes, impeachment is a-comin'. For some reason, it's a hard pill to swallow, as evidenced by Bill Clinton's poll-climbing routine during his dance with the 106th House Injudiciary Committee.

A good lawyer or political adviser will always advise his client to never get on the defensive. Democrats should not get caught in the trap of denying their intentions to impeach Bush. That's what George Lakoff is talking about when he says Republicans are great at "framing".

So how not to deny the plan to impeach?

Admit it.

Admit it with one hand, then instantly draw attention to the fact that Cheney will then be president with the other hand. Draw attention to the fact that it would not be a Democratic coup d'etat, and that they have nothing to gain from it politically, but that it should be done as a matter of law. Of course there will be hearings, yadda yadda, but if it's found that Bush broke the law, he's gone.

Embrace accountability. Embrace the letter of the law the way Republicans pretended to do in the '90's. Embrace a little righteous indignation. Do that, and you will embrace the electorate.

Put impeachment at the top of the agenda, Nancy, and you may just end up what George Stephanopoulos inexplicably got "stuck" in his head this weekend: Speaker Pelosi.

Someone settle this dispute, please. Preznit Bush claims we’re fighting WWIII. Osama bin Laden insists that he’s resisting an invasion by European crusaders. The Russian media is depicting the world stage as a reemergence of the Cold War. Hugo Chavez is fighting a Bolivaran Revolution against the American oppressors.

I’m not saying that the more complicated things, like what we’re actually fighting over, need to be explained, but can we please, please at least get the name of the war right? I’d like to get my anti-someone-or-something rhetoric straight, but I can’t do that with everyone switching wars every other day.

Everyone is fighting a different war, but oddly, the United States is the only player common to all of them. No wonder Bush thinks we’re in WWIII; everyone wants to be in a war (of some type) with us! So that explains that. Bush is involved in so many regional conflicts that he thinks the whole world is out to get him, and it probably is. Only it’s not the Axis versus the Allies this time. It’s a bunch of lesser powers against him. So many fiefdoms are out to fight him that even Empress-Queen Victoria’s blood would curdle trying to keep track of them all.

George would like us to think that the world is out to get us, and for good reason. Because of his belligerent unilateralism and jingoistic rhetoric, much of the world has naturally, to use a Kissinger term, tilted against us. But that doesn’t mean we’re in WWIII. There’s no alignment, agreement, pact or treaty common amongst the ever-willing enemies of America. They have their own problems at home, and Bush kindly provided them with an odious opponent on whom to focus their rage.

That’s a dangerous little game, make-pretending war. I know when I was a kid, whenever we’d get rowdy and have a mock fight, someone would get pissed off and a real fight would start. Looking at the world through smoke-colored glasses may be fashionable these days, but from my perspective they seem as in-style as hip-huggers and mood rings. So someone please tell me what war we’re in, if only so I can be in style, too.

Terry Jeffrey, a Republican shill said today, in reference to Porter Goss's sudden resignation, that the CIA needs to be overhauled because "we did not have one single agent reporting from the ground in Iraq about weapons of mass destruction." (Jeffrey on CNN)

He's not the only one. Several Republican mouthpieces have echoed these sentiments in the last few days. They've been pre-emptively preparing us for the spin on Goss's resignation, that much is clear. But let's jump in the time machine and exam this claim:



There was a whole lot more where this came from on Bush and Cheney's insistence that we had reliable and accurate intelligence on what was going on in Iraq before the invasion. Now they're trying to cover their asses, and contradicting their whole rationale for going into Iraq in the first place: that they were CERTAIN.

Why would they make such obviously contradicting and self-incriminating claims? First, to cover up their HUGE mistake in Iraq by blaming the the nebulous, faceless intelligence community. Maybe they can somehow figure out another way to blame Clinton while they're at it. Second, they can justify cleaning house at the CIA. After all, it wasn't their fault we went into Iraq; it was an intelligence failure.

There's one consistent characteristic about this administration: they always try to win for losing. Obviously, the administration is counting on a major intelligence failure on the part of the American people. They're hoping we're just plain stupid and don't notice that THEY ARE ADMITTING THEY LIED US INTO A WAR!

but Renaissance-era English primogeniture, the vestige of the dying feudal system, created the greatest middle-class in history. When the highly educated latter sons of an English nobleman or aristocrat came of age, they often went into military service, trades, politics, science, religion, or the arts. They became known as the gentry. The sons of the gentry became the upper-middle class of England in the 1400s-1945.

Colonialism and expansionism slowly weakened their stature, but in its prime the system produced some of the greatest artists, artisans, trademen, military leaders, scientists, philosophers, etc. Their value was dependent wholly on their education and their personal output, and not by ownership. It was a meritocracy of sorts, at least for a segment of the population. In the post-colonial phase (including now), wealth is aggregated more often by an ownership class, a revivial of the feudal system in many ways, with the result being the slow death of the middle class.

It's funny. All week the pundocracy and the blogosphere have been at loggerheads over a comedy routine. With the multitude of constitutional crises leaking like sewage from a septic White House, retired generals and high-ranking intelligence officers lining up around the corner to bash their former bosses, gas now at second-mortgage-on-the-house prices, a foreign occupation in Iraq going so poorly that the native replacements are running, not walking, off the job en masse... one would think the pundiblogistas would have something better to wrangle about.

But Stephen Colbert seems to have tapped a nerve with surgical precision. There's one thing both sides agree on: nervous chittering aside, Colbert's jokes went over like Don Rumsfeld jumping out of a cake at Hugo Chavez's birthday party. So what's with all the hubbub? It's not like Colbert said anything we all haven't already heard on late night TV, award-winning Hollywood films of every genre, and even prime-time sitcoms.

The crux of the issue seems to rest on whether Stephen did his job properly. One side says that Colbert failed miserably if only because his audience didn't laugh (much). That's what they say, but here's what they mean: Stephen didn't play ball like a nice boy. Criticism of Bush, they say, is relegated to the free-speech zones of mass media, where it can be peremptorily ignored. Facts, like Bush's Hindenburg-like poll numbers, can be trutherially spun by Sunday morning cartoon characters, but Stephen had to go and pull the tail of the elephant in the living room. In front of everyone. And that's plain rude.

The other side says that Stephen didn't flop because he told the truth. But he wasn't hired to tell the truth; he was hired to make the press and the prez feel fuzzy and warm over their abject failures. Assuming Colbert cashed his paycheck, they're right to fault him. He didn't do his job. And that fact, more than Colbert's pointed barbs and scalpel-like cuts, is why the press is vilifying him as devoutly as the bloggers are canonizing him. Colbert reminded them that they've been cashing their paychecks for at least six years without actually doing their jobs. This time they couldn't spin it, fake it, fudge it, plagiarize it, or ignore it. They had to sit there and and be reminded of the fact that they've been paid for a job not done for too long.

They were just sitting there eating their veal and foie gras, and some comedian comes in and reminds them that their jobs are not all that secure. There's a new breed of hungry truthiness-seekers out there, ready to take their seats at next year's event, and that would give anyone a week-long case of indigestion.

Make one choice for each question, and mark the letter on a piece of recycled paper.

1. What kind of car do you drive?

a) a compact car that gets good gas mileage
b) a hybrid
c) an electric car
d) a Cadillac Escalade SUV
e) pedal power for the people! only savages drive cars

2. When was the last time you ate meat?

a) more than a week ago
b) more than a month ago
c) more than a year ago
d) i am eating a raw pork sandwich as i read
e) no corpse flesh has ever defiled my pristine body

3. How do you smoke up?

a) joints
b) bong
c) eat it in brownies
d) you can smoke Oxycontin?
e) i don't smoke, as it funds covert CIA operations

4. How long will it be until you watch Keith Olberman again?

a) at least a week
b) at least a month
c) at least a year
d) is he related to Toby Keith?
e) i've never watched the capitalist mindsucking machine in my life

Scoring: 1 point for each a; 2 points for each b; 3 points for each c; -5 points or each d; 4 points for each e. Now add up your score.

0-4 points: You're an Apostate. You're an ideological disgrace. You probably don't even know the difference between a liberal and a progressive!

5-8 points: You're Toxic. You're the Love Canal of liberals, and it will take decades and congressional superfunding to clean you up!

9-12 points: You're a Fallen Angel. You've fallen prey to corporate enticement and are slowly reverting into a impure consumer. Visit your guru, psychotherapist, or the executive officer of your anarcho-syndicalist commune as soon as possible!

13-15: You're an Ideological Paragon. You have the purity to be an example to others and don't have to worry much about ever being called a hypocrite, the worst of all accusations!

16 points: You're an Ideological Saint! With your every exhalation of carbon dioxide, green, leafy plants sing your praises! No one understand that you don't bathe because the water instantly turns into wine! Starbucks close down when you walk by! But you feel you could be somehow better. Did you remember to hand wash your homespun linen "Free Mumia!" shirt in biodegradable soap?

Less than 0 points: Hi, you're a conservative, and you're on the wrong website. Click "Logout" for information on what to do next.