Grassroots Volunteers supporting John Edwards in every state!

ANNOUNCEMENT:
Ohio For Edwards, is recruiting members to join our grassroots group and become a part of a national network of volunteers, PeopleForEdwards, working in collaboration to support John Edwards as he battles poverty and fights to get Democrats elected in every state.  I WANT YOU to to join Ohio For Edwards TODAY!

There are two different Americas in our country today — one for those at the top who get everything they want, and another for everybody else who struggles just to get by.

John Edwards understands this, and knows that if we want to build one America, we need a change in our country's leadership. George Bush and Republicans across the country have not led us toward one America; the Democrats across this country will.

The One America Committee is dedicated to helping elect Democratic candidates across the country. Join us, and together, we can build one America that works for all of us.

Visit http://www.oneamericacommittee.com today.

I know everybody is focused on this November's election, as we should be.  Our first priority is ridding our government of the corruption, cronyism, ideological extremism, election tampering and rubber-stamp for the Bush-Cheney White House represented by the Taft/Blackwell/DeWine/Bob Ney/Jean Schmidt GOP machine.  But it's not too early to think about the future that lies ahead.

The swearing in of Governor Ted Strickland, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, Attorney General Marc Dann, and Senator Sherrod Brown next January will not only mark a great day for the future of our State and Nation, but also begins the countdown for selecting the next President of the United States.  At that point we only have 12 months before the first Caucuses in Iowa and Nevada with the New Hampshire and South Carolina Primaries a week later.

Former Senator and Vice-Presidential candidate John Edwards is asking for your help to organize and become a grassroots instrument for change.  As Co-Chair of Ohio For Edwards I'm here to tell you how.

First, stop by and register a a member of our Yahoo Group, Ohio For Edwards.  It's free, easy and doesn't contain an ounce of fat!  I'll keep you up to date on the latest happening, important announcements, and calls to action though our membership list.

Next, take a look at the Senator's blog, One America Committee Blog.  You can read what other progressive activists are up to, sign up and post your own diaries, and even submit your entries for submission to the community's front page.  It's all very democratic, with an interesting and intelligent membership -- rich with ideas and experience from all over the USA.

If you're not from Ohio, you can still visit People for Edwards and be directed to the group for your State.  We're still looking for Co-Chairs for about half the States, so if you're willing to spend the time, we're looking for leaders like you.

Even if you haven't made up your mind who should be the best candidate for President (it's okay, it is a little early in the process), you should at least JOIN Ohio For Edwards to keep abreast of how Democrats in general, and John Edwards in particular are going to need you to take back our country.

Real change is sweeping this nation -- and it starts here in Ohio.

Via: Election Law Blog, this AP story:  "Blackwell delegates state work as election approaches"

Blackwell has allowed assistant secretary of state Monty Lobb to sign all of the directives and advisories to county elections boards since March. Lobb also has broken six tie votes among county elections boards, The Columbus Dispatch reported for a story published Sunday.

Carlo LoParo, a spokesman for the Republican nominee for governor, said Blackwell decided to hand off those duties during the campaign under an Ohio law that states, "The general duties of the assistant secretary shall be such as the secretary of state assigns him."

Frankly, Kenny keeping his hands out of the cookie jar may be a good thing.  The obvious conflict of interests involved with the State's highest election official also being a candidate for the State's highest office leaves us with either nobody in charge, or putting the inmates in charge of the asylum.

Christopher McNeil, an adjunct professor at Capital University Law School and an expert on administrative law, said the public has a right to expect that the elected secretary of state is making the important decisions unless the power has been given to someone else in writing.

"I don't believe our constitution or the statute anticipates allowing the secretary of state to dodge his responsibilities," he said.

State law requires the secretary of state to break tie votes from county elections boards.

The Secretary's defense that there were no complaints when other candidates ran for office while holding another just doesn't cut it.  No Ohio Secretary of State has ever been under such suspicion for election tampering as Ken Blackwell.  

If he wanted to claim clean hands, that his situation is no different than Sherrod Brown or Bob Taft when they ran for office while serving as Secretary of State, he should have spearheaded an exhaustive, high profile investigation into every single complaint that came out of the '04 election.

He had ample opportunity to clear his name and remove the taint left over from before.  He could have fixed the problems and restored our faith in the system itself.  Instead, he was instrumental in defeating the grassroots effort to reform Ohio's election laws.

The fact that he did nothing to restore integrity to the voting process, and that many of the complaints that arose in '04 pointed directly to his own policies, speaks volumes.  He is the poster child for smarmy electioneering and deserves to wear that label.

There's nothing unfair about pointing out the obvious -- Ohio has been, and continues to be poorly served by Ken Blackwell.

This isn't about delegating his current duties to avoid the appearance of impropriety.  This is about him never living up to his sworn duties in the first place.

"If this war is so God damn important, why aren't the Bush twins over there in Iraq helping to fight it?"

Some things have been bugging me.

• Where's bin Laden?
• What's Turkey's problem with a Kurdish homeland?
• Why haven't Richard Perle and Doug Feith been used as scapegoats for the Iraq mess?
• How on Earth does Dennis Hastert remain Speaker of the House?

Then along comes a tale from former FBI interpreter, Sibel Edmonds, and her wrongful termination suit for blowing the whistle on what looks for all the world like a spy ring and corruption scandal that could expose our entire Middle East policy as a criminal enterprise.

"State Secrets" is the excuse that has slammed the door on her every attempt to get this matter fully investigated.  The little she is permitted to say without violating the gag order promises more questions than answers, but it started with talk of a bag of cash delivered to Dennis Hastert and leads to speculation that our entire Middle East policy is not some Zionist conspiracy, but a con game by the Turkish Mafia played on US neo-cons.

Why is Osama bin Laden still breathing?  Ladies and Gentlemen, we may have found a clue.

Turkey’s secular establishment, including the Turkish military and intelligence services (MIT), as well as political parties associated with former Prime Minister Tansu Ciller, appear to have been more connected to the Turkish mafia than the Turkish Islamic Parties that Washington abhors.  Furthermore, it appears from reading into some of Edmonds’ statements that the Turkish mafia was partnered with Osama Bin Laden’s al Qaeda network in the drug trade - meaning Turkey’s secular establishment was more connected to al Qaeda - pre/9-11 - than were the Islamists in Turkey.
(My emphasis - Mark)

Okay, I'm not speculating that bin Laden made it to Turkey and is hiding out in a Black Sea coffee house selling smack.  What I'm saying is that the Turkish drug trade keeps Osama supplied with batteries for his tape recorder and dialysis machine.  I'm also saying that this is old news to our intelligence community and political leadership who have done nothing to eradicate the fields in Afghanistan.

With the Turks about ready to exercise their inherent right of self defense against Kurdish separatist terrorists, much the same way Israel has chased after Hezbollah's cross-border attacks, I have to ask why would they be so steadfastly resistant to an independent Kurdistan sliced out of the Northern third of Iraq.  What's wrong with an independent Kurdistan?

You'd think our NATO ally would welcome a homeland for their belligerent minority to call their own, instead of trying to carve it out of southwest Turkey.  No one's been able to explain this away to my satisfaction.

There's more than meets the eye.  The lucrative opium trade feeds on the instability in the Kurdish region.  Just what do you think happens to all those Afghanistan poppies?

Edmonds, last August:

The American people have the right to know this. They are giving this grand illusion that there are some investigations, but there are none. You know, they are coming down on these charities as the finance of al-Qaeda. Well, if you were to talk about the financing of al-Qaeda, a very small percentage comes from these charity foundations. The vast majority of their financing comes from narcotics. Look, we had 4 to 6 percent of the narcotics coming from the East, coming from Pakistan, coming from Afghanistan via the Balkans to the United States. Today, three or four years after Sept. 11, that has reached over 15 percent. How is it getting here? Who are getting the proceedings from those big narcotics?
(My emphasis - again)

Another thing that bugs me, totally unrelated (until now), is why do absolutely discredited neo-cons like Richard Perle and Doug Feith still remain at large, holding distinguished fellowships at right wing think tanks?  Who would want to remain publicly affiliated with these crazed death dealers?

More to the point, other than the cover granted them by the GOP's hold on power in Washington, what or who is protecting them from being the natural scapegoats for our disastrous Iraqi quagmire.  The administration can't peg this nightmare on Powell, much too popular.  Tenant?  Bush hung a medal on the guy.

Why haven't they hung Perle and Feith out to dry, publicly humiliating them to absolve the rest of the cabal from all the blame?  What protects these two?   Lord knows that Cheney and the boys wouldn't hesitate to destroy them to preserve their illusion of infallibility.  Look what happened when Joe Wilson got too close to their little scam.

One reason could be that these guys know where too many skeletons are buried.  This story goes beyond Feith's henchman Larry Franklin giving US secrets to Israel.  If you haven't sat down to read Rolling Stones's outstanding expose´ of the clandestine dealings run out of Feith's Office of Special Plans in the Iraq war warm-up, do so as soon as you can.  Right now in fact . . . I'll wait.

Okay, Okay, here's the meat in the middle you might have overlooked:

Weeks later, in December, a plane carrying Ledeen traveled to Rome with two other members of Feith's secret Pentagon unit: Larry Franklin and Harold Rhode, a protégé of Ledeen who has been called the "theoretician of the neocon movement." A specialist on Islam who speaks Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish and Farsi, Rhode had experience with shady exiles like Ghorbanifar: He was close to Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi dissident whose discredited intelligence helped drive the Bush administration to invade Baghdad. According to UPI, Rhode himself was later observed by CIA operatives passing "mind-boggling" intelligence to Israel, including sensitive information about U.S. military deployments in Iraq.

Completing the rogues' gallery that assembled in Rome that day was the man who helped Ledeen arrange the meeting: Nicolò Pollari, the director of Italy's military intelligence. Only two months earlier, Pollari had informed the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein had obtained uranium from West Africa—a key piece of false intelligence that Bush used to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Now if you're following along, you should be asking yourself, "What the hell does all this stuff about catching a Defense Department official giving sensitive information to an Israeli advocacy group have to do with Turkey?"

Glad you asked.  AIPAC, the powerful American Israeli Public Affairs Committee has also been instrumental in forging a close alliance between the Israel, the US and Turkey.  Feith and Perle have been up to their eyeballs in these deals since the Reagan Administration.

Richard Perle and Douglas Feith worked as foreign registered lobbyists for Turkey back in the late 1980's and into the 1990's. They "quietly and deftly kept the {American] arms sluice to Turkey open" said Vest. Feith had hired former executive director of AIPAC, Morris Amitay, to assist in the task. The new Feith and Perle, Solarz and Livingston, have picked up where the largely disgraced Perle and Feith left off. One thing is for certain though; during Feith's reign over The Policy Organization, the ATC and AIPAC had their operative well-placed and, perhaps, under control.

Naturally this special relationship benefits not just the interest of Turkey, Israel and the United States, but the real winners in all this are "some of the largest U.S. weapons companies- Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Textron, Raytheon, Sikorsky/United Technologies" who all have a stake in the two most powerful regional powers cooperating militarily with the world's biggest arms supplier -- us.

Turkish drug lords!  What about those Turkish drug lords?

Someone has to be in the middle to keep the happy affair going, so enter the neocons, intent on securing Israel against all comers and also keen to turn a dollar. In fact the neocons seem to have a deep and abiding interest in Turkey, which, under other circumstances, might be difficult to explain. Doug Feith’s International Advisors Inc, a registered agent for Turkey in 1989 - 1994, netted $600,000 per year from Turkey, with Richard Perle taking $48,000 annually as a consultant. Other noted neoconservatives linked to Turkey are former State Department number three, Marc Grossman, current Pentagon Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman, Paul Wolfowitz and former congressman Stephen Solarz. The money involved does not appear to come from the Turkish government, and FBI investigators are trying to determine its source and how it is distributed. Some of it may come from criminal activity, possibly drug trafficking, but much more might come from arms dealing.

This really is where Sibel Edmonds' story begins.  Vanity Fair did a great job detailing what happened (and more importantly, what hasn't happened) when she reported on some obviously nefarious dealings a colleague was involved in.  The headline-making smoking gun from the article was that Dennis Hastert might have been on the payroll of some shady characters in the power centers of the Turkish government.

This might explain why is Dennis Hastert the Speaker of the House?  Just how did this guy get the job?  Before he was elevated to Speaker, I'd never heard of the guy.  He kinda has a Tip O'Neil bearing, but none of the charisma.  Lord knows his leadership skills are nowhere near his predecessor Newt Gingrich, and he's been completely ineffectual since Tom DeLay's departure. Just how connected is this guy?

Very well connected indeed, it would seem.  According to the Vanity Fair piece, at the same time that the GOP money man, Tom DeLay, reported completely unitemized donations to his campaign coffers of $99,000, Hastert took in almost half a million bucks from persons unknown.  The timing of his good fortune coincided with his removing legislation from the House Floor that the Turks wanted buried.

At the time, he explained his decision by saying that he had received a letter from President Clinton arguing that the genocide resolution, if passed, would harm U.S. interests. Again, the reported content of the Chicago wiretaps may well have been sheer bravado, and there is no evidence that any payment was ever made to Hastert or his campaign. Nevertheless, a senior official at the Turkish Consulate is said to have claimed in one recording that the price for Hastert to withdraw the resolution would have been at least $500,000.

Mike Mejia's article , reprinted at Larry Johnson's No Quarter, might just hold the answer to all of my seemingly unrelated quandaries, and ties them up in a neat little bow.  The documentary will be coming soon to a theater near you!  (As soon as it finishes it's European run this fall.)

You have to go clear back to the Carter Administration to understand the roots of the imminent decline and fall of Condoleeza Rice's foreign policy carreer.  

No, there's no skeleton in the dormroom closet from when the young Ph.D. candidate interned at the Department she now directs at Foggy Bottom.   But while she was still a Democrat, the Shah of Iran fell and our relationship with Iran (and the rest of the Middle East) went straight to hell.  It has never recovered, and that's just how the neo-cons like it.

Now, to add insult to injury, not only has she been taking the advice of her Deputy, Nick Burns (the only competent foreign policy professional in Washington, a deal maker), Condi wants to try diplomacy with Iran?!? 

The warmongers will not let this stand.  The last thing they want is a detente with Iran.  They've been were salivating after the remnants of the Persian Empire back when Condi was still hanging out at the Denver Bronco's locker room.

    Rice not only has to manage the Iranian response to her initiative but has to manage Vice President Cheney's team -- including John Bolton -- who will try to undermine her at every step.

    The President had to sign off on this initiative, but what is not clear is whether he is going to give his complete support to Rice or whether he is going to sit on a perch while his closest advisors slash each other over this.

That's the word on the street.   Actually, the word on the American Street was that up until a couple of weeks ago, she was citing Lebanon as the first thing on her list of "positive trends in democracy in the Middle East."

Opps.

President Bush still has a lot of folks in his bubble who keep listening to Richard "Dr. Death" Perle and Newt Gingrich's push to start World War III in earnest.  If they have their way, Condoleeza Rice's days as Secretary of State are numbered.  If she's effectively neutered over Lebanon and her initiative is seen as a flop, the chances are that much dimmer for her attempts to rationally deal with Iran.   The gods of irony are alive and well when this crowd has the gall to complain about someone else's incompetence, so you just know there's more to it.

Her mission as peace broker in the latest round of the Arab-Israeli war-without-end is doomed to failure.  She's being set-up by the likes of, Rummy, Deadeye Dick, UN Ambassador John Bolton, Arms Control Undersecretary Robert Joseph (who took Bolton's old job), and Cheney's National Security guy John Hannah -- a Scooter Libby case figure and former Bolton assistant.

No doubt Cheney's former consigliere and Chief of Staff David Addington has his hand in this somewhere too.  Likewise Intel Chief Negroponte and his loyal lieutenant (and convicted felon) Elliot Abrams.  The cabal of criminals and crazy kooks is alive and well in the seats of power -- hardly missing Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, or his bagman (another convicted felon) Larry Franklin.

They tied Condi's hands and sent her out for photo-ops between bombing runs in Beirut to make headline after headline announcing that she's done absolutely nothing to stop the carnage in Southern Lebanon.  It almost makes us pine fondly of Kissinger for at least trying.  One thing they won't let her do, something Kissinger did again and again, is go to Damascus.   How exactly she is supposed to accomplish President Biscuit Breath's simple solution to get Syria to reign in Hezbollah without meeting with the Syrians is beyond me.

BTW, we actually have an ambassador from Syria sitting in Washington, as well as a UN ambassador admiring the view of Turtle Bay, just sitting by their phones.  They make the Maytag repairman look like he just won a popularity contest.

Condi has never suffered fools like Neo-con Kool-Aide mixologist Doug Feith, whose investigation as the nexus of insane Iraq intelligence interpretation has been permanently sidelined by Senator Pat Roberts.  He still has a lot of powerful friends who no doubt remember Condi saying at a "Principals' Meeting" on the Middle East, "Thanks Doug, but when we want the Israeli position we'll invite the ambassador."  It looks like they're out to get her because the last thing they need is a catastrophic peace to break out before they're done fucking up the world.

The long, involved juicy story of the neo-con/Iran/Israel connection in this Rolling Stone article is well worth your time.  While Condi is away, the rats get to play.  This is just the concluding paragraphs:

In a victory speech of sorts on Inauguration Day in January 2005, Vice President Dick Cheney warned bluntly that Iran was "right at the top" of the administration's list of "trouble spots"—and that Israel "might well decide to act first" by attacking Iran. The Israelis, Cheney added in an obvious swipe at moderates in the State Department, would "let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterward."

Over the past six months, the administration has adopted almost all of the hard-line stance advocated by the war cabal in the Pentagon. In May, Bush's ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, appeared before AIPAC's annual conference and warned that Iran "must be made aware that if it continues down the path of international isolation, there will be tangible and painful consequences." To back up the tough talk, the State Department is spending $66 million to promote political change inside Iran—funding the same kind of dissident groups that helped drive the U.S. to war in Iraq. "We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared.

In addition, the State Department recently beefed up its Iran Desk from two people to ten, hired more Farsi speakers and set up eight intelligence units in foreign countries to focus on Iran. The administration's National Security Strategy—the official policy document that sets out U.S. strategic priorities—now calls Iran the "single country" that most threatens U.S. interests.

You'd think that would show the cabal that she was going along with the program.  But not if she starts looking like a successful diplomat that can bring even the hope of peaceful settlement of our differences with Iran.

The shift in official policy has thrilled former members of the cabal. To them, the war in Lebanon represents the final step in their plan to turn Iran into the next Iraq. Ledeen, writing in the National Review on July 13th, could hardly restrain himself. "Faster, please," he urged the White House, arguing that the war should now be taken over by the U.S. military and expanded across the entire region. "The only way we are going to win this war is to bring down those regimes in Tehran and Damascus, and they are not going to fall as a result of fighting between their terrorist proxies in Gaza and Lebanon on the one hand, and Israel on the other. Only the United States can accomplish it," he concluded. "There is no other way."

Who do they want to take her place?  Old Bush family retainer, James Baker III's name is being bandied about, but that seems delusional.  The days that a large coalition can be cobbled together against Iran like he pulled together for the First Gulf War are long gone.   This administration has gone beyond squandering it's good will.  It's credibility is nonexistent.  Moreover, Baker is truly competent and may be even more effective in reaching a deal with Iran while fending off the neo-cons.  He knows where all their skeletons are buried.

Hat Tip to Emptywheel who always gets my thoughts rolling.

The memo said:  "Democrats Determined To Take Congress."

“As for Bush himself, he is curtailing his traditional August working vacation at the ranch so that he can barnstorm before the midterm elections,” writes Allen for Time.

“Their outlook thus far seems so ominous for the G.O.P. that one presidential adviser wants Bush to beef up his counsel’s office for the tangle of investigations that a Democrat-controlled House might pursue,” Allen continues.

Emptywheel's essay, Who's Driving this War? posits the neocons aggressively opportunistic attitude towards the violence in Lebanon is a do-or-die gamble of a discredited ideology:

The Neocon warmongering now comes not from a position of strength, a confidence that their influence in both the administration and the nation will remain strong. No. It's the desperate act of a compulsive gambler, who after losing big, puts all his remaining chips on the table.

Anyone who's played any serious poker, or if you're more than a casual fan of the endless games of Texas Hold'em on cable TV, has learned that aggressive play is a winning strategy.  Indeed, it's the only strategy.

Bold moves can steal pots even when your cards are weak.  The big bluff is not a desperate move, but the only logical move when you're short stacked.

I've seen many a player make this move and come out on top -- but only if their bluff isn't called.  In the realm of international relations as conducted by the Bush administration however, when the neocons like Bill Kristol and just plain con artists like Newt Gingrich raise the stakes to World War III, liberals are in no position to call the bluff.

Fortunately, there are some sane conservatives whose permanent seats at this game were staked out decades ago.  That's why it is so very important when traditional conservatives like George Will, and founding members of the neocon movement like Francis Fukuyama look the warmongers in the eye and call them on their nonsense.

(UPDATE: Here's a better link to the George Will smackdown of Bill Kristol)

The hypocrisy and irrational policies of the Bush administration are manifold and have been exhaustively documented.  Now, John Dean has offered both a scientific and historical analysis of the phenomenon explaining Bush's unprecedented excesses, the fierce loyalty of his supporters, the use and abuse of fear and political divisiveness, and the common denominator binding such divergent and often mutually exclusive interest groups that make up the modern "conservative" movement.

Glen Greenwald's excellent review of John Dean's, Conservatives Without Conscious, as well as a brief excerpt, is mandatory reading while you wait for your copy of the book to arrive.

The tactics and strategy of Bush conservatives is exposed as exploitation of fear and fealty to authority, absolving the individual from personal responsibility for otherwise unconscionable acts.  The targeting of "enemies" opposed to the movement -- liberals, terrorists, liberals, communists, liberals, the media, liberals, the courts, and of course liberals -- perpetuates the rationale for the movement's followers that their cause furthers a "greater good" regardless of the methods used.

What brings religious fundamentalist into the same camp as tax reform crusaders, corporate raiders, xenophobic racists, neo-conservative empire builders, anti-government libretarians and fiscally responsible deficit hawks is not their common cause -- but their common enemies.

It is not a movement towards any goal except the perpetuation of their own power, their seat at the table.  Promising protection from, if not defeat of their opposition, leaves their followers with the feeling that their cause is just and they will be protected from the enemy de jure.  Any delay in satisfying their individual interests is justified for the sake of security, believing that their cause will be attended to as soon as the "enemy" is defeated.

Of course, defeat of an enemy would immediately lead to the disintegration of the coalition, since their competing interests would then have to be addressed.  Announcing a "War on Terror" neatly sidesteps this problem.  Perpetual war without any articulated enemy -- just a tactic and/or an emotion -- or identifiable conclusion is indeed a brilliant solution of a movement that is defined not by what is is for, but what it is against.

Such a negative dynamic is anathema to normal American politics, likened more to a South American dictatorship.  Fear-mongering and war-mongering are indeed effective means of coalescing political power, but certainly not something that aspires to American ideals of freedom, privacy and individual dignity.  Unfortunately, it has become the norm in 21st Century American political discourse.

Relentless attacks against political adversaries, especially apostate "traitors" to the movement, give rise to the popularity of the Coulters, Malkins, Limbaughs and Hannitys, whose entire schtick consists of constant attacks on everything and anything liberal.  Disagreeing with them makes you either a liberal, terrorist sympathizer, or both.

Joe Wilson and Glenn Greenwald, to name just two examples, are personally attacked, but rarely argued with.  The substance of their message, and any counter argument, is lost in the ad hominum dissection of their motives and personal lives.  Persuasive?  No, yet very effective -- especially to those more interested in defense of the "conservative" movement than an exploration of the truth.

Exposure of the inherent lack of integrity and internal inconsistencies of the Bush authoritarians is valuable in understanding how and why they have come to power.  However, is exposure enough to combat this insidious coalition?

The search for a bumper-sticker slogan that can capture the necessary meme for resistance to them, the simple appeal to reason that both persuades and informs seems elusive if not trite.  The obvious historical authoritarian corollary, fascism, or the cult of personality that bred similar authoritarian figures who used identical tactics like Hitler and Stalin, have become almost out-of-bounds to counter-attack the Bush authoritarians.  Even the direct American predecessor to the current regime, Nixon, is considered an unfair -- albeit wholly accurate comparison.

Certainly it is true that the Bush administration hasn't come close to the wholesale disregard for human life and individual liberty as Hitler or Stalin, but the Nixon comparison is more than apt -- except that Nixon's had a better understanding of the complexity of foreign relations and was more appreciative of the dynamics of the U.S. economy.

Is the bumper sticker something like, "Bush, not as bad as Hitler or Stalin, but worse than Nixon?"

Or will simply elevating the tenor of our discourse, refusing to sink to their level, be enough?

Christy Hardin Smith's answer is a resounding NO!

Hypocrisy, thy name is Bush, and it is about time the entire nation started calling him on it.

I hereby pledge to do whatever it takes to help the Democrats win back the House and Senate in November, to restore at least some check and balance to our government.  Whatever it takes to gain some accountability for all of these many Bush Administration failures — because the public has a right to know about each and every last one of them.  

And from there, whatever it takes to prevent this sort of man from ever sitting in the Oval Office again in my lifetime — for every election to come in my lifetime. America simply cannot afford any more of this narcissistic ego and poor excuses for public servants. The stakes are too high — both for me and for my child and I, for one, have had more than enough.

We cannot afford any more years of unchecked power grabs by a unilateral executive who is hell bent on keeping a war going, damn the cost, to buck up his poll numbers, and a herd of yes men whose sole purpose in life is to promote whatever spin is necessary to keep the boss happy, and to hell with the consequences to the rest of us.  I have had enough.  And Karl Rove's reign of ends justifies the means is about to hit "game over."  If there is anything at all that I can do to hasten that along, I will do so, I swear to all that is sacred.

Who is with me?