I was ashamed of how the press ignored his presidential run. (And because of that lack of publicity, it was impossible for him to raise money)

The press talked all the time about Howard Dean, and were enthusiastic about General Clark. They even gave prime time to Al Sharpton.

Now, try to find an article saying how Lieberman would be the best bet for Democrats.

Try to find an article that says he would be able to span the gap between social conservatives and liberals.

(For example, abortion: As a religious person, he is on record upholding respect for life. But Judism sees the unborn as potential life, and that sometimes social or psychological or medical needs of the mother outweigh the duty to repect life. It is not the flipflop of Kerry, but a finely tuned argument that allows abortion while condemning the “I don’t want to shop at Costco” abortions(See recent NYTIMES articles) .

Even now, the Democrats are ignoring Lieberman.

Wonder why. Anti semitism? Anti Religion? Anti Moderation?

Don’t know. But when liberal California has Arnold, and Massachusetts has Romney, but Oklahoma has a DEMOCRATIC governor, it says something about how the party might go if the left loses this election.

Two of the men Sen. John Kerry defeated for the Democratic presidential nomination, retired Gen. Wesley Clark and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, brought Democrats to their feet Thursday night with ringing calls for America to kick President Bush out of the White House.

What are your thoughts on discipline and hedonism? I would say that moral clarity is connected discipline, and hedonism is the abnegation of discipline. Leftism and permissive mores go together, and conservatism and disciplined mores go together. When the conservatives get too strict, they’re called fascists, even in a non-political sphere.

One of the first female marines… that’s quite impressive. I’m honored to blog-comment with y’all, Penwil.

I won’t mention what I was doing on that date because, well, I’m not THAT old and it was not the least bit impressive

The “too religious” and “religious right” stuff is always worth countering. I suggest asking questions about how they judge the degree of the “religiousness”, do they know anyone they judge to be similarly religious, does that person effect their life in any way, is anyone trying to force them to go to church or read a bible or pray… A surprising amount of the time one finds that the person expressing some concern over the “religiousness” is quite religious themselves. I find that odder’n hell. At this point I’ve generally got ‘em ’cause I can then say something like, “Well, you’re infinitely more religious that I am but I don’t find you ‘too religious’, so why does the president seem ‘too religious’ to you?”

We have to get them thinking and recognize that its gonna take some assistance for them to clean out the cobwebs and oil up the fears and get rid of the squeeks and such

As far as I can figure this the entire “Anti-Religious Right” screed is based upon Pat Roberstson and Jerry Falwell and a few fallen televangelists. Who cares? If you don’t watch them and send them money, where’s the rub?

As to the Civil Rights movement, lets not forget that more Republicans than Democrats voted for the Voting Rights Act, and that Jim Crow was a political product of the solid (Democratic) South. Perhaps the greatest piece of modern myth-making is that the Democrats stood on the side of Civil Rights in the ’50s and ’60s, while the Republicans opposed it.

Social Security and Medicare aren’t necessarily anything to be proud of, either. Both are massive transfers of wealth from the poorest segments of society (workers, especially young workers) to the wealthiest (the elderly, who own the vast majority of assets in this country). Medicare has done wonders to distort and drive up the cost of care for everyone. These programs are fiscally unsustainable in the long run – someone is going to have pay a terrible price someday for these Ponzi schemes. Many already are, in terms of both lower paychecks and health care costs driven up by regulatory burdens and cost shifting.

As a 55-year-old woman, I won’t be joining the shooting war either. Although, I do have a very small bit of street cred having served six years in Marine Corps in the ’70s. I was commissioned on August 8, 1974, easy to remember because it was the day Nixon resigned. Our Woman Marine basic class was the first one to undergo training with the men. There was a lot of media hoopla throughout. We did all right, although not as well as the press reported us as doing. For instance we had to run a modified obstacle course or none of us would have passed. We simply did not have the upper body strength.

I actually did try the first suggestion on your list yesterday. My gardener freely admitted that we were at war with “these Muslum fanatics who want to kill us all,” and that Kerry “probably wouldn’t be tough enough,” but then in the next breath she said she could never vote for Bush because he was “too religious.” I pointed out to her that Bush might be religious, but he wasn’t trying to kill her. Don’t know whether it converted her, but it did seem to give her pause.

Here’s the way I figure it in my own knuckleheaded fashion. I can’t go join the “shooting war” – too old and fat and broken down. I’d be more hindrance than help.

So I have to fight the battle the best I can at the margins. The diehard ABBs are beyond my influence. Nothing I can say or do will turn them. Here’s what I can attempt to do, however:

- find one “unwitting ABB memebot” and create enough fear, uncertainty and doubt within their ABB circuitry that they decide to sit this one out. That’s one vote that doesn’t go to Kerry

- find one “Otherwise Usefully Intelligent ABBer” and work it until they see the light. That’s one Kerry vote that goes to Bush.

- find one “Potential Bush Nose Holder” work it enough to make sure they get off their arse and at least go hold their nose. That’s one vote that might have been lost but isn’t.

- find one “My Vote Doesn’t Count” dope and work it until he gives up and goes to the polls and, hopefully, figures that even if he wasn’t willing to put in the effort to figure it out then maybe at least I am correct. One potential plus vote.

- find one “I Like Dubya” person who is likely to be “too busy” on election day and escort the sumvitch to the ballot box. That’s a polled plus that wouldn’t have come through.

It ain’t much but its something. That’s how I’m playing out the next three months.

Giving Democrats credit for the civil rights movement is going too far. Republicans were part of that also. Besides, the Democrats have been coasting on that movement ever since, still approaching too many issues with the smug air of moral superiority they initially picked up fighting racism in states completely controlled by Democrats. Furthermore, the Democrats are attacking Bush for spending that was only a very logical extension of Medicare (conservatives don’t like it either, but they are at least consistent).

And note that the mountains of skulls in SE Asia are partly John Kerry’s fault. The discussion of the Soviet monolith falling over neglects the large amount of pushing, all of which was opposed by the Democrats. For example, the Boland amendments were an attempt to keep the US from fighting the Soviets’ second tyranny and subversion base in the US – in Nicaragua. One of John Kerry’s first act as a Senator was to go to Nicaragua to meet with the communists. I guess he enjoyed it so much when he met them prior to his slanderous and lie filled propaganda he spread around the country, that he just had to try it again.

It was a Democrat President who screwed up Vietnam. Kennedy properly got us more deeply involved. Johnson combined an idiotic strategy of attrition with cowardice regarding interdicting supplies. In the process, he used up too much trust, especially among the media, who consequently misreported the Tet ‘68 offensive, getting it completely backwards, and demoralizing Johnson to where he decided to resign – this after a crushing defeat of the Viet Cong (reported as a major defeat of the US). [The MSM were a bunch of skunks then also - they never corrected their misreporting]

It was a Democrat Congress that threw away the victory in Vietnam, won at a cost of 58,000 American lives, and easily held with a relatively small amount of money and casualties. They did this on the advice of Kerry, among others. If you listen to the 1971 Senate Foreign Relations Committee of John Kerry, the Democratic Senators are taking his stream of vicious lies at face value, when they had to know better.

I would say that the policy of the Democratic party in the ’80s was to make accomodations with the Soviet tyranny, never recognized as such by Democrats. The view was that the USSR was about to catch us economically (per Clinton’s main foreign policy adviser Strobe Talbot), wasn’t that evil (only silly “John Birchers” thought otherwise), and had to be accomodated anyway because they couldn’t be defeated. Unconscionable was their vicious attacks on Reagan’s efforts to prevent new Soviet subversion bases in the America – Grenada, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

On foreign policy, the Democrats have been confused since Johnson, and Kennedy’s activities weren’t terribly successful, although he appeared to have a more healthy (literally Reaganesque) attitude. Starting in the early ’70s, the Demorats in congress became an active opponent of US attempts to hold back the USSR. Under Carter, communism bloomed throughout the world, while his actions towards Iran brought in Islamofascism. The Democratic party stood for revolution in the world, except in communist countries.

Clinton inherited a world with few threats, except for the growth of Islamofascism. But he managed to fail to apprectiate the threat (even though the 1993 World Trade Center attack should have been enough to recognize that mass killing had replaced small casualty operations by Islamists). A number of other attacks and attempts sent the same message. But instead of confronting the threats, our forces were deployed all over the world in feel-good operations. Even worse, reservists ands guardsmen were used in these operations, a clear violation of the social contract that reservists and guardsmen have.

Given this history, the prospect of John Kerry as president is frightening.