Awesome.

I won't have time to read it until I get home from work tonight

I'm usually just the opposite: "I don't have time to read that until I go to work."

Ron Paul's been saying that for the last 15 years. And he actually voted against this war in the first place.

About time. This certainly seems to distinguish Edwards from Hilary.

Ron Paul gave a kick-ass speech in Austin the other day.

Ron Paul

And he actually voted against this war in the first place.

That's all fine and good, but the only vote that Ron Paul made that might have mattered was this one. And he was on the wrong side.

And instead of Hastert, we'd have had ... who?

No! No! NO! It's not a war on terror! It's a war on terra! And I have to use a bunch of exclamation points to tell you1!!!!!111!

After seeing Edwards' dismal performance in '04 in his debate against Cheney - I really don't think (especially for a lawyer) that he's all that quick on his feet. He won't be able to shake the preening airhead image that he's being cast in.

He doesn't seem to have a good attack mode, and he seems to still refuse to straight out call liars on their lies.

dAVE is a liar.

6: I suppose you have an argument that Paul, if he disagreed so strongly about his party on the war and other matters then he should have changed caucuses. That probably would have made his opposition even less noticeable and given him even less influence, but even among Dems he still would have stood out as one of the most consistent and courageous.

The two party system is an illusion. We have one party: the War party, and its two wings are called Republican and Democrat.

The whole bird is a product of the military industrial complex.

11: No, I don't expect Paul to switch parties. Heaven knows he isn't a Democrat.

We have one party

[eye roll]

13: We have one party
[eye roll]

apo, I guess you have NOT read any of Chalmers Johnson's three books (Blowback, Sorrows of Empire and Nemesis)? If you had, you'd know where Jon is coming from.

There are certainly very important differences between the party, but the tendency of both is to feed special interests, elites and the military complex and the size of government (more spoils for various parties to fight over). Pork-barrel for the home state bases and defense contractors is a constant demand, and our extensive overseas military base system is always inviting trouble. The continued military expansion is a constant threat to civil liberties and keeps us hostage to temptations for adventurism that the President thinks will benefit him and his party. There's lots to be concerned about.

Clinton was MUCH better than Bush, but we'll see how resistant to temptation Dems are when they have both houses and the Presidency.

Clinton was MUCH better than Bush

And was also the most conservative Democrat to hold the office in the 20th century. He himself said his administration was basically Rockefeller Republicans. Of course every government must be watched with vigilance. But with the evolution of the Republican Party from Nixon onwards, the two parties have never been further apart.

I'm right there with you guys as far as foreign policy and the M-IC goes. I'd like to see the military slashed down to the size necessary to defend our country and quit throwing them all over the world. I'm pretty old-school isolationist, and dislike liberal interventionism only a little less than right-wing neo-imperialism.

But seriously, the choice between the two major parties is incredibly stark. The Democrats have a sizable caucus that supports reducing the military. The GOP has a caucus of one, and they view him as a crank.

That's because he IS a crank, unless you really want to go back to the Gold Standard, do away with the EPA, the ATF, the FDA and the rest of Federal and State Government. Ron Paul is a crank, and a right-wing one at that.

I am all for internationalism. It's a necessity. But I am for an internationalism with goals consistent with our great national purposes and documents, not with our incessant greed for oil and money.

An intervention in Darfur would have been a good and welcome thing. Unfortunately, we're draining the blood of the 82d Airborne into the sands of Baghdad, completely unnecessarily, and to the great detriment of our position in the world.

Edwards's speech was brilliant, and deserves more attention.

9: It's like you're reading my mind. If so, don't tell anyone about that thing.

That's because he IS a crank

Yes, there's that.

I hae often blasted people who bring up the false canard about Edwards in the VP debate. I find it's often people who happily threw their vote away to Nader who make that criticism.

Edwards did very well, and in all polls taken after the debate, viewers rated it as a tie or an Edwards win.

Some people wanted him to stand on the table and cleave the Vice President in two with a mighty blow from his atomic hatchet.

Or they wanted him to waste 5 minutes of a one hour debate plaing"Did so, did not, did so" about who saw whom at what Washington prayer breakfast.

Instead, he confronted Cheney on the issues, excoriated him about Halliburton and fraud both here and in Iraq. He blasted the conduct of the war and, by comparison, made Cheney look like the fat ugly toad he is.

So, let's have o more of false conventional wisdom, shall we? It makes you look lazy.

19: So, let's have o more of false conventional wisdom, shall we? It makes you look lazy.

As opposed to, say, stating that my unhappiness with Edwards' debate performance in 2004 is indicative of
a) a vote for Nader (I didn't, BTW).
b) The result of my wanting to see Edwards froth at the mouth about a prayer breakfast, and not having the attention span to watch the whole debate and make an informed decision.

Trust me, I was pulling for Edwards every second of this debate and I felt like it was a Cheney win at the end, WH Prayer Breakfast aside.

Also, (not that it's terribly important, as you pointed out). I think there's a way to call someone on their lies without resorting to 'plaing"Did so, did not, did so" about who saw whom at what Washington prayer breakfast.' Clinton was pretty good at that sort of thing in his presidential debates.

Oooo, you threw my typo back at me. You're good.

Ctrl-v threw your typo back at you. I apologize, I didn't mean anything by it.

Both the Left and the Right of this country are both controlled by the elites of gigantic banks and corporations. Hell, even the radical fringe groups are funded and steered too. The giant banks and corporations control much of the "radical" element, too. Yes really.

And the schools? They are designed to make us into "human resources" for use by the elite minds. That's been going on for 150 years, and in earnest for about 100.

Yes, I think we should first instigate a gold standard, then do away with a national currency altogether and simply adopt the one that is most stable out of personal choice. Ron Paul is a genius who thinks similarly. Only this would deflate the true powers that be who have been mucking things up around here for a long time.

Democrats and Republicans. Oh yes, the arguments are heated, and in a given year they are meaningful--but in the long term, they are cosmetic, and underlying them are the real issues that only a few candidates here and there dare to breach every once in a while.

They all visit the same whores and snort the same coke and molest the same boys. You can bet that the same people are blackmailing them, too.

Or, in the case of JFK, having them whacked.

Well, it sounds like Ron Paul is your perfect candidate then.

Apo, you're right that he's going to lose, though, but it's fun seeing his words turn Benito Rudy Giuliani's face different colors in apoplectic anger.

Ron Paul would be great but I would settle for George Carlin.

Jon has a point, apo. Just watching the Republicans turn evil once they grabbed power should be enough tto show everyone that the name of the game - when the government is big - is milk the governmnet for personal/elite gain and to manipulate all levers of power to consolidate that grip, and its kids in a candy store time for the special intersts, who only have one party to bribe and don`t have to worry about messy public debates. Cheney/Bush/Republicans are on their way out only because Iraq was a cakewalk, but then indigestible.

And the corporate-owned media does a piss-poor job at really covering the depth of the scandal and corruption.

Dems need to focus seriously on restoring constitutional government, dismantling secret shit, and paring back the Great Pork Bareel Machine. How likely is that?

How likely is that?

Much more likely than anybody else doing it, certainly.

First step: shared agenda/concerns.
Next step: Holding Presidents and Congresscritters responsible.

"Next step: Holding Presidents and Congresscritters responsible."

Here's a reminder, courtesy of the Iraq war and Memorial Day:

"To be fair, responsibility for the war's continuation now rests no less with the Democrats who control Congress than with the president and his party. After my son's death, my state's senators, Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry, telephoned to express their condolences. Stephen F. Lynch, our congressman, attended my son's wake. Kerry was present for the funeral Mass. My family and I greatly appreciated such gestures. But when I suggested to each of them the necessity of ending the war, I got the brushoff. More accurately, after ever so briefly pretending to listen, each treated me to a convoluted explanation that said in essence: Don't blame me.

"To whom do Kennedy, Kerry and Lynch listen? We know the answer: to the same people who have the ear of George W. Bush and Karl Rove -- namely, wealthy individuals and institutions.

"Money buys access and influence. Money greases the process that will yield us a new president in 2008. When it comes to Iraq, money ensures that the concerns of big business, big oil, bellicose evangelicals and Middle East allies gain a hearing. By comparison, the lives of U.S. soldiers figure as an afterthought.

"Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.'s life is priceless. Don't believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier's life: I've been handed the check. It's roughly what the Yankees will pay Roger Clemens per inning once he starts pitching next month.

"Money maintains the Republican/Democratic duopoly of trivialized politics. It confines the debate over U.S. policy to well-hewn channels. It preserves intact the cliches of 1933-45 about isolationism, appeasement and the nation's call to "global leadership." It inhibits any serious accounting of exactly how much our misadventure in Iraq is costing. It ignores completely the question of who actually pays. It negates democracy, rendering free speech little more than a means of recording dissent.

"This is not some great conspiracy. It's the way our system works."