Obama's right, but this whole thing is convoluted. We've got a couple of criminals in the White House and we're still trying to come up with a way to get them to change their minds about how to conduct the war? How about 20 years in jail for each of them? How about trying them for treason? How about impeaching their sorry asses? I'm guessing that would soften them up.

Looking at those first quarter numbers awhile back it seemed Romney had maxed out the most contributors of anybody in the first quarter, many more than even Hillary.

before anyone tries to point out the deauthorizing doesn't help bring about an end to the war, keep in mind, deauthorization is a bullet point on john edwards plan to end the war as well.

So what's your point?

Deauthorizing the war won't keep one soldier, one Iraqi alive in the killing fields of Iraq.

Bringing the troops home will keep some American soldiers alive. The sooner the better. It will also take some of the venom out of the school for terrorists that Bush is running.

maybe it's only convoluted when the frontrunner is leading on iraq.

When exactly did Hillary start leading instead of following?

People might consider that there are Democrats planning for more war.

Few are calling for an outright end to the war.

The voters are and can find few followers.

Best, Terry

I don't know why people would consider something that is so obviously false.

The only way to finish the Iraq war as long as Bush is in office is to refuse to pass any further Supplementals. Clinton's deauthorization is fine, but is obviously facing a veto, as are those timetable ammendments.

i DO think that clinton and edwards plan to deauthorize help move the process along.

As an act of contrition instead of an apology? Or what?

I think it's an even more transparent fig leaf than the Lugar-Voinovich-Warner cover.

One can argue about some of the proposals to maintain a presence for training Iraqi troops (militias?) though I think they are foolish. More substantial are arguments for maintaining a presence in Kurdistan but I think it would be most difficult to find any sort of workable plan and would invite attack that might make it worse for the Kurds. The folks most likely to be inhibited would be our friends, the Turks.

Most Democratic senators are plainly not committed to cutting our losses and some are clearly hawks. I count Clinton as among the hawks.

Best, Terry

Agreed. I would have thought that wisdom and skepticism would have thrived after Vietnam. I was certainly wrong on that one!

by sending every measure of legislation across his desk that he can veto, then it substantiates that whatever happens next becomes HIS own damn fault.

i don't think he will back away.

but then all you're saying is that congress should do nothing until '09 when, presumably, a democrat takes office. that course of action is not practical, immoral, and not even beneficial politically.

this is a matter open to some debate, but i get the sense the american people are expecting a democratic led congress to end the war before 2009.

so. how do you do that?

When you think about it, why did the Vietnam war happen after the Korean War? You'd have thought the electorate, media and politicians would have learned from the Korean War (over 50,000 American dead, public very angry, Truman didn't run for reelection because of low polls over war).

These wars happen because our leaders want them, IMO. They don't care what the American people want. How many who voted for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution left office voluntarily in order to hold themselves accountable? Hopefully, the Obama campaign will run an aggressive campaign this fall showing the 2002-3-4 (maybe even 2005) pro war statements of the other candidates, not just to win but because it would be a victory for the nation to hold them accountable.

You'd have thought the electorate, media and politicians would have learned from the Korean War (over 50,000 American dead, public very angry, Truman didn't run for reelection because of low polls over war).

Gosh, Karen, as I recall it, Truman hit a low point when he fired Gen. MacArthur - a more delightful action no president ever took. Truman was hated not for being a hawk but for being unwilling to pursue the kind of land war with China that the vainglorious MacArthur himself had once warned would be a huge tragedy for America, much as America was warned about the kind of war Bush took us into in Iraq.

Truman had grievous faults but also mighty virtues. No president ever was so brutally candid with the voters.

There was a visceral hatred for Truman among Republicans, and the winger Democrats today represented by the Clintons, that no other president ever achieved, surely not in the internecine wars between Bill Clinton and his twins that call themselves Republicans.

The tyrant in North Korea survived and spawned another to maintain a hellhole that continues to this day. Our tyrant in the South did not. It is not an ideal situation today but it could be far worse as Bush has fully demonstrated.

Best, Terry

why are you a democrat?

most of your party's politicians are genocidal maniacs.

So you believe most Democratic politicians are genocidal maniacs? Perhaps one might ask you why you claim to be a Democrat.

I don't believe most politicians of any party are genocidal maniacs.

I do believe there are folks who fear cultural, class, ethnic and even gender differences along with loss of power and privilege.

There are people who play on these fears. They are called conservatives.

It is no accident that the Democratic Party is the party of minorities while the Republican Party tends to be lily white despite the occasional show of color.

Conservatives try to hold the clock back, to hold the lower classes in check, to keep those "other people" from gaining power.

Hillary Clinton, like Bill Clinton, is the very face of conservatism in the Democratic Party.

I am a liberal Democrat and prefer liberals who don't fear the future be elected.

Why does that frighten you?

Best, Terry

The majority of the country already thinks the war is his own damn fault. You're fighting battles already fought and won. There are only two battles that matter right now: the battle to end the war now, or, that failing, the battle to get the legislative numbers and the Pres in 09 to end the war then.

That's all that matters about the war right now. And the bill to de-authorize is plainly not a bill designed to make progress on the first battle, to end the war now, or even really on the 2nd battle (insofar as it does not put a "generic Dem." in better position in the coming election, for a House seat, Senate seat, or Pres.). Indeed, the only interest it serves his Hillary's own in pursuing the party nomination. That is all. Same with Edwards' de-authorization proposal. Which means it's only relevant to the battle to end the war insofar as you believe Hillary/Edwards are in unique position to win the Presidency and end the war quickly.

By the way, I strongly believe the reason Nancy Pelosi took impeachment off the table when she did was because she didn't want the Republicans to be able to use it as an issue during the last election. She knew full well that the Republicans would be warning Americans that if the Democrats got a majority in the House, they would try to impeach the president. The Republicans already know EXACTLY how vulnerable Bush and Cheney are, and they also know that if the situation were reversed, and there were Democrats in the White House and a Republican majority in the House, we'd be in the middle of an impeachment right now. So Pelosi defused a potent issue before it could be used against us. But it's time for the Speaker to accept the fact that it was not her right to unilaterally deny Americans one of their rights under the Constitution. And it's time to publicly and officially put impeachment back on the table. Where, under the Constitution, it already is and where it belongs.

In taking impeachment off the table, Nancy Pelosi has emboldened Bush and Cheney and tacitly endorsed their criminal activity.

The most equal of the three equal branches of government is the legislative. That was the reason it was broken up into two houses with different electoral rules by the authors of the Constitution, who feared absolute power above all.

For sure, a unified Republican Party is in a position to defy the Democrats' tenuous control of Congress at the moment.

But the Republicans are less and less unified and have to be looking at a date with the voters, who are not in a congratulatory mood.

You are probably right that the Democrats have no power to impeach at the moment but the voters are not taking kindly to inaction. The mood is volatile and the public may not be so inclined to view very obvious and undeniable obstructionists kindly.

Best, Terry

We just saw what kind of vitriol came from folks like you

If you wish to make friends and influence people instead of just satisfying your blood lust, it is best to show you have been educated well enough to know the proper declension of
irregular verbs:

Thus:

- I am analytical.

- You are confused.

- He is vitriolic.

You are confused.

There has been no beginning to the end of excess. The situation has only deteriorated because of the impotence and cowardice of the purported opposition that is part of the problem.

The polls show the result.

Best, Terry

all you ever do here is harp on Dems on a left leaning board.

If you think this is a leftist retreat, you know little of the left. It is only in the world of ditto-heads where Genghis Khan could be considered an old softy, that could make one think this place is overrun with liberals.

For sure I have no particular interest in discussing the goose-steppers except when they call themselves Democrats. Should I join in the name-calling you think? Do you need someone to point out the sterile arguments of the neocons? Why bother?

I am very glad, though many are sad, that Joe Lieberman got the boot as an instance. It was a very good thing that rightwing idealogue was revealed for what he was but gawdamighty it took a long time.

Should we talk ideas or just spew hate you think?

Best, Terry

i have no idea what you think of the dem party.

Easy enough to ask rather than telling me what I think.

When the Democratic Party is the party of ideas, of egalitarian liberalism, of civil rights, of freedom, of minorities and women and the working class; it is a magnificent vehicle for progress and justice and peace.

When it is the party of oppression and segregation and privilege, when it functions to favor privilege and power over rights and justice; it is a retrograde institution as it has been under the banner of the segregationists and Bill Clinton.

Clear enough for you?

why do you frighten yourself?

When my doctor told me that if I didn't take care of myself I could die an early death, I told him it was far too late for that. I had already outlived my life expectancy. (I should probably get a more perceptive doctor but most of them are Republicans as you know.)

I have nothing much left in life to fear. Maybe you should try your hand at something other than psychoanalysis. You are as poor at it as the Commander Guy is at war.

Should you get your way and another winger in Hillary is elected president, the worst part may be that she will likely inhibit election of liberals in states from Maine to Oregon but it is others that will suffer rather than us. Unpleasant but we will bear up.

Why do you want war, disease, pestilence, poverty and injustice? I will fully admit you are fearless in the face of that. Are you certain you are not a Republican?

Best, Terry

you want an idealogically driven party.

Wrong, flame thrower.

I want a thoughtful party that represents its constituents rather than a pack of bought wingers.

Best, Terry

"When the Democratic Party is the party of ideas,"

you didn't say thoughtful party, you didn't say a party of real world solutions. you said a party that holds true to ideas. that's idealogically driven. that was your first choice of words.

Hey, Torch, your education is sorely lacking.

Idealogues don't think, don't have ideas, don't discuss. They have rote formulas. They spread the gospel of the Prophet.

Think Bill Kristol. Try to think anyway.

You are going to tell us Bill Kristol is a man of ideas?

You're damn right I belong to a party of thinkers rather than a party of sheep. That is why I am a Democrat. Democrats are at their best when they are proposing new ideas, when they are looking for solutions to problems your folks create.

What are you, Torch?

Best, Terry