i miss this gal. We should have cured cancer before it took her. Do you ever have the paranoid thought that the big pharmaceuticals may be buying and suppressing cancer research because they make so much money out of cancer treatment? I do. What’s that say about me? I think curing cancer would be bad for business, and big business is all about maintaining the health of the bottom line.

Molly left out the greatest foreign policy problem. The USA’s blind support for everything that Israel does.

There is no way to achieve a decent society until the Middle East problems are solved and people start treating each other as empathetic human beings and not beasts.  Part of this requires the elimination of religion from the planet and the replacement with an underlying belief in science: reason, logic and evidence!

Thank you, Molly.  As always, your comments are to the point.  We can’t “count our chickens” yet.  Dems have to get out and vote!

I submitted my comment ove 36 hours ago, and it still has not posted, yet other comments have.  It is nice to see that on a supposedly truthful website, you refuse to publish comments from a dissenting point of view containing the truth.  In case you didn’t catch the sarcasm there, I’m decidedly annoyed that my freedom of speech has been encroached upon by your poitically slanted views.  Perhaps you should change your website to “WhatWePerceiveAsTheTruth.com.”

To JVV “36538”
You don’t have enough intelligence to recognize you are NOTHING to the “party of choice for intelligent people” unless you are a mega rich war proffiteer with enough money to bribe these bastards for YOUR fucking tax dollars for government contracts and get kickbacks for election campaigns. They will take your vote and tell you to get fucked, just like the White House did to the evangelicals. Your party is the party of Jack Abramoff.  Your party is filled with criminals that are resigning left and right in disgrace to serve their time in prison.
Your party will really be “whining” if the dems take the House and begin to uncover the rest of the criminal activity these “intelligent people” have engaged in.  Your party is filled with hypocritical assholes who on the surface appear to be the all American, God fearing individuals that attack gay people on every front and as it turns out will snort meth and play hide the banana with same sex partners and lust after adolescents behind the closet door.  Your party is ruining America by raping the Constitution.  Your party is the party of bigots and homophobes. Your party is seen by the rest of the world as more dangerous than Al Quida and the other terrorist. 
“The party of choice for intellignt people” is the party of conservatives’.  This brings to mind a quote from a great man, John Stuart Mill who died in 1873 after a long successful tenure in public service. He stated, and I agree, “although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people… it is true that most stupid people are conservative.” 
Go ahead and support these bastards, they will be your demise just like the rest of us if they stay in power.
Will

Ms. Ivins,

You always come through with just the right amount of emotion and passion at the time it is most needed.  Your words, tinged with the lovely Texan-twang with unabashed honesty and self-deprecation laced with just the perfect amount of wise contemplation, genuinely sooth a person reading this particular Saturday evening.  You know, when that campaign fatigue really starts to take hold, and you can’t control those rising nerves and anxiety.

I say let the GOP and their media lapdogs focus on Kerry’s Gaffe. It only draws people’s attention back their horrific and criminal Iraq fiasco.

I find it disgusting that no one in the mainstream media has pointed out the irony of draft dodging cowards like Cheney, Rove, Bill O’R, and Limbuagh questioning the patriotism of a decorated vet like Kerry. It is easy for Hannity and Carlson to wrap themselves in the flag now that they are paid propagandists for Pravda..er FOX. I see neither could be bothered to actually put their ass on the line when they had the opportunity to enlist.

I love to listen to you sorryass dems whine.  Anybody that would trust what Ivins writes probably owned stock in Air America. You’re all working, you haven’t been bombed since9/11 and you got more money in your pocket that you would have had if the blowhard dems were in office.  They got more baloney than a meat store.

But it will be interesting to read you when the Republicans, the party choice of intelligent people, keep both houses in 2006, the president and congress in 2008.  So by buy your anti-acids and keep in bitchin.

Leon - What is the world was that all about? Disgusting! Dishonest and not funny!

Little Brother

Regrettably, for a whole lot of bad reasons, stupid comments like the one Kerry made (and by the way, I think he meant exactly what he said and the inference being made by the opposition this time, incredibly, is not so far off the mark) dominate news cycles until yet another gift is given to us Democrats in the form of an evangelical, weekly Bush advisor getting caught playing with a male prostitute and snorting illegal drugs. 

That’s why seasoned and smart politicians don’t make such dumb statements.  Which is Kerry not?  Seasoned?  Smart?

It’s ironic - Kerry was only our candidate in 04 because another candidate couldn’t keep his yap shut and made serial comments that were softballs for his opposition.  Of course, Dean could be excused, to some degree, because he HAD to speak because he was actually RUNNING for something.  Kerry is running for nothing.  He shold have just shut up.

So that answers the question.  Kerry is stupid. 

He runs on some sort of six month time delay, doesn’t he?  Like he did in responding to the the swift boaters and the Ohio election theft ( maybe next year he’ll bring up the latter). I guess he thinks he’s the presumptive nominee for 08 and there’s no better time to start campaigning than right now.

So we can conclude that he is in fact “seasoned.”  He’s baked, browned, salted and peppered and ready to serve.  Stick a fork in him.  He’s done.  Thank goodness for that.  No Kerry in 08.  That’s worth cheering.

Kerry kicked a child to talk about Bush’s education policies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd4IxEekOI4

MOLLY IVANS:  “If Kerry had been given as many breaks for misspeaking as George W. Bush has, he’d be a professor of grammar by now.”  I’ll have to remember that “strategery” for my next argument about this. 

Gracious but we find the dumbest things to talk about!  As this is an election year folks, could we all at least pretend to have a clue what’s important!  Like, oh I don’t know, Iraq and the 2800 dead soldiers with more still possible?  How about those 46 million Americans without health insurance?  What about the minimum wage not going up for close to ten (count them, TEN) years!  No, ignore these things and many others.  Talk about the senator who can’t tell a joke (which everyone already knew by the way…you did see the same campaign that I saw in 2004, right?). 

It was a gaffe, it happens.  At least Kerry didn’t call the troops jelly donuts!  Why didn’t Kerry correct his mistake right away during the speech?  Well, like Bush on an open mic at the last G8 summit, I suspect he probably thought no one was really listening.  We all have been spending much of the last two years pretty much ignoring the man.

Honestly, if the Rs keep control because of this, even in a marginal way, I think Bush ought to just declare himself *The Leader*, set the calenders all back to 1984, and just have done with it. 

The distortion shown by the Rs is just astounding, even for them.  To this point, we find John McCain in Illinois demanding an apology of Kerry and lamenting the plight of the wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital who had “lost limbs”.  Kerry maligned them with his comment, or so the implication goes.  McCain was campaigning for Republican Peter Roskam for congress while he said this.  One minor detail—Roskam is running against Tammy Duckworth, a wounded Iraqi veteran who lost both her legs while serving this country in Iraq.  McCain was berating Kerry for not supporting the soldiers in Iraq while campaigning AGAINST a former soldier who served in Iraq. 

That may make sense in Dubya’s America, but not in mine.  If Kerry has disqualified himself for a run for president in 2008 over this, so too has McCain. 

We really need to change politics in this country in a big way if crap like this eats up a couple days of news.  If it turns an election, we’re really in trouble.  GO VOTE AND TAKE SOMEONE WITH YOU!

Hey, folks:
The Bush admin has been posting ONLINE detailed information for how to build AN ATOMIC BOMB!

It’s front page news on the New York Times…

So why does anybody give a rat’s ass about a botched joke from a non-candidate?

No Democrat should allow any more questions on Kerry, instead INSTANTLY changing the subject to Bush giving out detail nuclear weapon info—and that the REPUBLICANS insisted he do it—it’s from the captured Iraqi documents.

Pronounce the Kerry gaffe DONE and demand answer on the Bomb!

i must be a real cad. I thought it was true that most kids join the military because it offers them the best career prospects when life hasn’t dealt them such a great hand. But, wow, look what happened to John Kerry for saying as much.
I’m not a great fan of the current Australian government, and i’m not a great fan of other lousy governments such as Hitler’s, Botha’s, Pinochet’s, the Taliban…etc, but, all things considered, personally i think you guys are currently holding the record for bad government, considering the amount of lives your current government is adversely affecting, i.e. the lives of everyone in this world, the poor more than the rich but only until the oceans start to boil and everyone goes boots up.  So please vote them out, please, please, please…
we are so depending on you. You guys with the vote. (Or should i be appealing to Diebold?)

Do not forget Enron.  In the list of horribles, this meltdown is THE example of how:  1) energy affects everything (and not just in Texas); 2) you don’t want a world run by traders and energy companies; and 3) this Administration is BIG ENERGY.  ENERGY, ENERGY, ENERGY.  WAR IN IRAQ, TAX BREAKS FOR BIG OIL, DENIAL OF GLOBAL WARMING, HALIBURTON, DRILLING AND SPILLING EVERYWHERE,MAKING $$$$$$$$$$$$.  For this Administration, power is the means but not the actual end. The end is domination.

There is always the voting machines, I remember Kathleen Harris down in Fla.  There is the guy in Ohio (I cannot think of his name right now) who also runs the election, are we going to see more of Fla. and Ohio, and most people do not know what is going on in New Mexico and on the American Native reservations.  I saw a documentary on PBS about how the people of Dutch Harbor (an Alaskan island) and all the people in the island chain that when to the international date line, the Natzi prisioners of war were treated better, the old get rid of the Indian mentality was still in effect in 1942.  And this mentaility is still in the deep south, and in Tennessee and I just hope that there are more Harold Fords and Native Americians are respesentated in these United States.

Marge from Vancouver Washington
(home of a Democratic governor, women at that)

Has anybody missed how Bushie Boy really showed us his hate side, the religious church going person he says that he is upset that J.Kerry hurt the military, most people with a brain can see how they took a small mistake and blew it out of context, and this is not the first time the Harold Ford incident for example he was one of 3,000 people at that party, but this (so called) beautiful blonde) woman was so taken by Harold Ford, and the message is that Harold Ford would love to take this well rounded person to bed, and what is hidden beneath the surface is if Harold is in the senate he would be taking a lot of white women to bed, and maybe even making children that are not lilly white, fits into the southern fear.  But these neocons will not be satisified until we all are under the banner of being religious and bigioted anti gay people, I mean if N. Paosi becomes the Speaker of the House the gays will be marrying and taking over the county.  Such fear mongering, Kerry is right these people will grab at any straw, and the Dems instead of being glad he speaks the naked truth, hurry to tell him to say I’m sorry, for the Bush administration taking a remark completely out of contxt.  I am for John Kerry, he may not be perfect, but I believe he is very honest.

Marge from Vancouver, Washington

Molly,

Your last paragraph says it all.

I live in the district that has been represented by Katrherine Harris for two long years. She and the others you listed are very ethically challanged! It is time for a change!

Indeed, Constitutionally, people, it’s up to WE!

SQUASH that “gnat”!
You forgot gas is coming down again.
Don’t you wonder why these things you mention are happening so convienently before the election?
That’s politics for you!
Democrats are going to raise taxes alright, but for the almighty rich who has been given every tax break imaginable (whether they have children or not) for the past 12 years under republican control. When President Bush is touting that democrats are going to raise taxes, he is talking to all of his rich cronies and not to the American people as a whole.
I’m sure I speak for a lot of middle-class Americans who can truthfully say that we have been left out of the loop far too long!

Gnat -

Excuse me? The deficit is going down? As I recall, Bush inherited a SURPLUS. It took him and his tax cuts less than a year to turn that into a deficit - and more US debt than all the preceding presidents COMBINED have been able to create.

Are the Dems saints? Hardly. Are there corrupt money-grubbers in their ranks? You bet. But what electing a Democratic congress buys us is accountability for this wildly inept (at best) executive branch, and the restoration of at least a modicum of competency to government.

If the Republican leadership did not fervently believe in every single word of Kerry’s inappropriate, but unfortunately accurate, jib about getting goods grades so you don’t have to join the military and end up in an ill conceived war, then how else to explain why few, if any, of the Republican leadership’s privileged kids are fighting in Iraq?  In fact, if we are truly in a “struggle for Civilization” itself, then why are the First Daughters wearing olive drab?  If the Republican leadership truly supported the troops, why haven’t they heavily taxed themselves to pay for adequate armor and enough troops to do the job?

Frankly, I am tired of those who refused to defend their country by wearing a uniform where bullets are flying accusing those who actually have of being cowards or disliking the military.

More at resistence-is-possible.blogspot.com

“Gnat” does not have a grip on reality, so he-she-it is throwing us the Futility Of It All spin.

It won’t work.

We are going to the polls—and we are calling on everyone who is sick and tired of this administration to do the same.
VOTE!

It’s our only chance to RID this country of leeches like Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Tom Delay, Rick Sanitarium, George Allen, Jack Abramoff, Mark Foley, Bob Ney, Duke Cunningham, Bill Frist, Dennis Hastert, Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed, and so many other creeps who deserve to be penniless and homeless for what they have been doing to our once great land.

Do you really feel the Dem can protect us?? I don’t agree with The Pres on everything but give me a break. BOTH parties are corupt but this is what we’re stuck with. Keep listening to the BS about the tax cuts!! Does everyone with a kid get more money back from the gov. YES and not just the rich. And the Dem want to cancel this and raise taxes….FOR WHAT !!! the def. is lower and the stock market has a new high…. Does Molly talk about that NOOOOO!!!
Get a dose of reality. Both parties are in it for the $$ ...They could care less about you and me.

Don’t forget the tax cuts for the wealthy, the prescription drug plan, the housing bubble and DHS. Why stop ripping off poor, when we have the gift that keeps on giving, ignorant voters.

VOTE!VOTE!VOTE!
Molly says it all!
Beware of the more than likely bombshells coming from the right wingers as the election grows near. Bombshells targeting the undecided’s that they hope will sway votes in their direction.
Please stick to the issues at hand and whats truly important in hopes of returning this country back in the “left” direction!

Kerry botched a joke.  No one died.  Bush botched a war, Katrina, and everything he has touched in our country. If Americans are so easily mislead by the smoke screens that Bush and Company try to throw up, then God help us all because they are the masters of smoke screens, lies and manipulation.

Why hasn’t this short succinct and precise message been a Democratic ad airing during these past few weeks all over the country???

It says exactly what so many of us wanted to hear.

When are the Democrats going to get it together???!!!

Stephen Juli

Molly,
You have been living under a false assumption all these years.  You thought the United States of American stood for truth and justice.  It does not.  The current administration has demonstrated time and again what this country really stands for: greed.  More for me.  More money, more gas, more oil, more cheap labor.  What you have seen under Geo W is not the subverting of American values, but the unmasking of them.  His only sin has been to finally pull back the curtain on this country and reveal the stunning ugliness behind it.  Suprising?  No.  We all knew it was there but we hid it from ourselves.  Behind churches, behind children, behind charity.  It was always there.  It will always be there.  All W did was to make it policy.  War for money.  War for glory.  War for personal gain.  If W ever leaves the White House and if everything gets back to ‘normal’ again, it will still be there.  It will just be hidden once again.  The only difference will be that it will not just be us that knows about it.

Molly is right in her observations. Unfortuately, as best as I can understand it, Rove is, too. It seems that year after year, the democrats lead until the last few days before an election, then once again, lose in spite of polls and pundits. People like Kerry certainly don’t help. Around here in Ohio, people are beginning to talk about how the republicans overcame fierce opposition once again. Let’s face it, we now have a one-party system

Right on, as usual!  I’ve been astounded at the volume of the latest noise machine attacks, particularly on Kerry.

It seemed virtually every media outlet had some Bushie surrogate spewing their lies and “outrage” at Kerry’s comments.

The White House press conference that day was a joke, with reporters laughing out loud at Tony Snow’s ridiculous comments.

Even Lynne Cheney got into the act.  Reporters often challenged the buffoons, but the bottom line is they got their bullshit on the air.

What a pathetic country we’ve become!

Listening to Bush supporters on C-SPAN mouthing the talking points makes me wonder if some people have a brain cell left in their head.

One today said she knows Kerry was only in the service for three months.

Gawd!

Republicans will work to get out their vote till the very last minute.

Democrats must do the same.

I’ve already voted so, could we get on with something else?

For all the ‘political operations’ of the Rovish GOP, perhaps Goebbles said it best when he observed that the bigger the lie, and the louder and longer you shout it, the more it becomes truth.

As for all the wipeout predictions, that might be part of a GOP strategy to induce the overconfidence Mollie fears.  A proper progressive response would be to hit the polls even harder, so as to make a mere wipeout a rout.

And it’s up to YOU too, Molly. Everything you say is true: the barrel is approaching the falls, and if we don’t act soon we’re gonna drown in the froth of dictatorial zeal. HOWEVER, I don’t get why you say “People, it’s up to you.” Are you not one of us? Or, do you think because you write a lefty political column that you are somehow exempt from participating in the gut work for change?

Remember when Gandhi—-Ben Kingsley—-speaks at the Indian Congress meeting for the 1st time? All of the Congress party members make exciting, provocative speeches. Everyone cheers. Then Gandhi gets up and essentially tells the audience that their words mean nothing. “I know that what we say here means nothing to the masses of our country. Here, we make speeches for each other, and those English liberal magazines that may grant us a few lines. But the people (of India) are untouched. Illiterate they may be, but they’re not blind. They see no reason to give their loyalty to rich and powerful men who simply want to take over the role of the British in the name of freedom. This Congress tells the world it represents India. My brothers, India is 700,000 villages, not a few hundred lawyers in Delhi and Bombay. Until we stand in the fields with the millions that toil each day under the hot sun, we will not represent India—nor will we ever be able to challenge the British as one nation.”

That’s exactly how I feel about the current liberal diatribe: All of the great liberals—-Kennedy, Dean, Kerry—-writing and speaking for and to each other. I mean, c’mon! Do you think that the ordinary person—-the rancher or farmer or taxi driver or teacher simply looking to put food on the table for the family—-trusts these liberal aristocrats? Gandhi was right. They’re a bunch of snotty intellectuals who like to pat each other on the back for their great insights, their commitment to “the struggle” (Puleeeaasssse!). The only way we’re going to rescue this nation from the grips of the Bush Tyranny is when all of us commit to making real sacrifices—-sacrifices of our time, our wealth, our egos. In the meantime the wealthy liberal will continue, as Gandhi said, to represent nothing more to most of us than the flip side of a two-headed coin.

(Addendum: I’d also suggest that all of the liberal pundits in this country—-you know who you are: the ones who write for: http://www.Slate.com , http://www.CommonDreams.org

http://www.TruthDig.com, etc.—-that all of you take a moment to realize that you’re preaching to the choir. How are you going to affect real change? You wanna save the country? Get out from behind your laptop and do something real.)

Now that’s our Molly with the wit, sarcasm and smarts to tell it like it is. Well done, Molly.
You are back in great form.

When I was a youth, during the Vietnam era, there was often an option given to any of my classmates who were having trouble academically, socially, or legally, and this was to go into the military to straighten their lives out, or face other consequences for their errant behavior. A number of teen-agers, even in jail (or faced with going to jail) chose the military option, even though they hadn’t yet completed high school. Apparently more cannon-fodder was needed to fight in the trumped up war in Asia, so the standards used for recruitment were relaxed.

Times changed in the military. With the ‘cut & run’ (AKA coming to our senses)from Vietnam the necessity of the draft abated, and eventually we went with the concept of an all volunteer military. Educational standards in the services went up, and it could be said our troops became more professional in their abilities & the Pentagon gained higher caliber cannon-fodder.

With the protracted conflicts initiated by the current administration we are once again faced with shortages of qualified educated recruits, and there have been numerous articles in the past year about relaxed standards now for new recruits into our military. Substantial signing & re-enlistment bonuses have hardly made it easier to keep pace with recruiting goals. The option of a draft is a subject no politician will touch with any length pole, regardless of the fact it would cause such a furor the current middle-eastern conflict would be drawn to a speedy conclusion. Given the choice of a draft, or the current policy of trading American soldiers’ blood for control of oil resources, one could even argue America would go ‘cold turkey’ away from our addiction to foreign oil, and speedily toward sustainable renewable sources to meet our energy needs, but this is not the point of this blog.

My point is to bring to light a fact I haven’t seen mentioned during the endless MSM hash, re-hash, and hash once more about this incompletely stated (a few key words left out) witicism John Kerry was trying to gaff at the president a couple days ago. If the spinmeisters hadn’t gone so overboard the truth of the matter might have gotten some serious consideration. Our military is drastically over-extended, lacking in personel resources, and now given to offering enlistments to less-than-ideal recruits, so the Republican war hawks might want to back off from Kerry a bit for intimating (albeit rather in a bumbling way) what could be a hidden, but profound truth. Our military forces are being degraded in their capabilities & abilities through over-extension in Bushs’ war, and ultimately, to maintain its numbers must accept either lower standards for recruits, or a draft.

Kerry has made an apology for being mis-understood, so let’s either drop this subject Kerry embroiled himself in, or thoroughly look at all the intimations & ramifications of what he said he meant to say. We have bigger & more important things to discuss right now, many of which Molly mentioned in her fine article. Thankyou Molly.

Molly:  Trust me on this.  Hastert is history.  The Sauk Valley Newspapers, Dixon, IL - as faithfully rightwing as any of the most conservative newspapers in the country - has printed 1 story every day about Hastert not returning to the Speakership.  The message: we have all the pork we are ever going to see for quite a while.

John Laesch is someone you need to check out.  He’s a carpenter and veteran of Naval Intelligence with an Army Sgt. brother about to return from Iraq.

Laesch has an open mind on this issue: “It’s because of Rahmn Emmanuel the Democratic slate maker. Obama said he would go to the districts Rahmn sends me to—and Rahmn won’t send him to the Il-14th because Laesch will not take a firm stand with Israel on the Palestinian issue.

Laesch is for human rights for all—that is a debatable value to hold these days even in some democratic circles—because they all depend on the same purse strings to stay competivitve . . .”

Instead, without a dime from the DCCC, Laesch has raised $170K online and (my guess) $300k from liberal Democrats, conservative Republicans who hate the spending of Hastert, and those opposed to the war in Iraq.

You should get to know him.  I think Tuesday, everybody will.