Like the Plame case–one side conspires to pull-off a memogate-style set-up, then the other side fights back –and the story becomes “both sides are dirty”. Feh.

It’s like “Hey, I’m innocent, he hit me back first!”

MSM is wayyy lefty.

I think too, that even in the topics you dismiss… there are still serious points of unease, bad things did happen at AG, GitMo does have some constitutional questions and in the Plame affair, there was rather scandalous crap on both sides.

Will you deny there has been a seven year concerted, deliberate, planned effort, on the part of a half dozen major media organizations, to demoralize the voters?

I would say that the media has been irresponsible in their drive to run stories that sell. I would agree that due to the type of education that they have, most of the media has a slight liberal bias in their views. I would not agree that it was necessarily an intentional act to hurt the voters or the Republican party… that concept seems to depend on the disposition of the observer. (There may or may not be some truth about some individuals like Dan Rather, but I don’t think the evidence points to some 4th estate Conspiracy).

In the end, Bin Laden and his crew have been at war with us for a long time. I personally think that Mr. Bush’s plan to democratize Iraq as a buffer for the GWoT was a badly formed plan. I think the buy in from congress (all congress) was absolutely wrong… they should have challenged the administration, that’s their job. The issues with wiretapping, GitMo, AG etc may all be less that the headlines read, but the Congress should have been forthright in their investigations, rather than dismissive.

The fact that some Republicans, even recently, made comments like “Thank you for your informative answers and candor, Mr. Gonzales” when all he said was “I don’t know”, is a very bad thing. Even if Mr. Gonzales and the Administration are entirely innocent, the members of Congress should be focused on getting the actual facts, rather than being friendly to their party members from the administration.

That’s why I voted against the incumbents last fall.

Further, acknowledging the threat of jihad is one thing. The Republicans get full marks for it. However, they have only come up with bad plans in order to deal with it. Bad plans are as bad, if not worse than no plans. So good job on not sticking their heads in the sand, but they’ve not exactly made us safer… I’m not yet convinced its done anything even close.

“You’re Gonna Have To Prove It”

Easy it is to blame, say, Clintonism for culturally-internalizing an ethos that is all letter-of-the-law, and has difficulty even acknowledging that there IS anything called the ‘spirit’ of the law.

The enforcing mechanism for the spirit of the law, is (or was) “shame” –and we the people are responsible for the decline of that bad old Victorian guilt-inducing standard.

To wit, any politician who acts corrupt will do OK for himself, unless he actually breaks a law. This has the effect of traning policitians to be legalistic–something they need no incentive to do, since most of them are lawyers. Or the MSM manages to convince the public that the politician is corrupt or guilty. Since this latter group are confined to people the MSM wants “publically convicted”, this has the effect of training politicians to worry more about appearance than substance. Take a stateman-like position on Social Security reform? You’ll be buried alive. Bring home the pork for a new school? You’ll be lauded.

The congress is only as corrupt as the voters that put them there.

I still disagree, tho. The nation has a long history of surviving bad doings in DC –in fact scandals are almost regular, every few years we have a major one, then we clean house, and are better for awhile. All in the family so to speak.

And truly, the current scandals are pretty minor, compared to things like Teapot Dome, exposes such as Tammany Hall, Mafia in gov’t & unions, Watergate, the S&L Crisis, several of Clinton’s scandals, and a dozen or three sprinkled in between and among. Yes, pork and earmarks and K Street are problems, but the deficit is under 2% and falling, so, tho absolute pork numbers are big, relative numbers are small (the economy has grown enormously, adding a “China” since 2003).

Yes, Abramoffs & Duke Cunninghams are bad, but the press is making us all feel like we’re in scandal hell, when a great deal of the ‘wrongdoing’ is artificial political crappola like the Gitmo, Plame Affair, and Abu Grabe scandals.

Will you deny there has been a seven year concerted, deliberate, planned effort, on the part of a half dozen major media organizations, to demoralize the voters?

And at any rate, the scandals are not existential threats either way–just sad, tragic, and lamentable, and yes, damn the perps AND the false accusers.

But then on the other hand we have this jihad going on, it IS an existential threat, in that it already very nearly decapitated the American governmental, military, and financial systems back on 911 and is by many accounts bigger and more dangerous now than then.

It has us by the short hairs over the world energy needs, is but a step & fetch away from a powerful influence over OPEC and nuclear weapons (Paki or Iran).

Yet the one party apparently, as far as anyone can tell, has no plan, nor even any plan to have a plan, to cope with it, other than to assert that it’s just a trifle, and that those who think otherwise are vile, crooked, evil, stupid, haliburton, richard burton, whatever.

IMHO, of course, all that.

In your perception, than may be true. In my perception, pork/corruption/partisan lack of oversight etc. is just as dangerous to the health of our nation as the most fanatical jihadist. If we cannot trust our government to be responsible and to manage our affairs in a fair and balanced manner, then what the hell does it matter if someone blows up a few more buildings?

Further, I find corruption and partisan glad handing to be a insidious attack on the foundation of this nation. If a jihadist destroys a building, we can mourn the lost and rebuild (and kill a few of the fu*kers if we’re lucky). If corrupt politicians destroy the trust of the American people, their faith in government and our standing on the world stage… we get to mourn and rebuild a new nation.

I’d prefer to rebuild the building.