Commenting on the interruptions from the Larouche supporters, Carol Mosley Braun said "Do they do that to Republicans?"

..... what universe has she been living in? How can anyone take seriously a candidate who doesn't even watch the speeches of the President whom she hopes to replace? (not that anyone has to this point)

BTW, Stephen, thank you for the live blogging. The guys on my floor here were watching the Boondock Saints.

The Boondock Saints is a great movie. Why on earth would you watch the debate instead?

There's a curiously unpleasant feeling -- much like freefall -- that occurs when you suddenly realize that a line of lies and propaganda you always assumed everyone knew was false is being accepted by millions as the truth. The one that we're getting now from the entire Democratic field is that "the U.S. can't handle Iraq" and that we need to bail out, to bring the boys home, that we need to dump it off on the UN and get back home to nurse our wounds. Never mind the nauseating fact that these guys are trying to spin an American victory into a "humbling" defeat -- the basic premise is untrue!

We have serious work to do in Iraq, and some of what we're doing there could be done better -- as the White House points out, there's no model for what we're trying to pull off, so forgive us some false starts -- but overall, it's going right. Check this out from Max Boot:

Reconstructing Iraq
With the Marines in the south and the 101st Airborne in the north.
by Max Boot
09/15/2003, Volume 009, Issue 01
I WENT TO IRAQ in August, the day after a bomb had ripped through the
United Nations compound in Baghdad, killing 23 people including the U.N.
special envoy. I came home the day after another massive car bomb exploded
at a mosque in Najaf, taking more than 95 lives including that of a leading
cleric. Yet I returned more optimistic than when I went. Understandably,
these attacks have caused apprehension, verging on panic, among U.S.-based
commentators and politicians. A chorus of critics is already attacking the
Bush administration for losing Iraq. During my trip I, too, saw plenty of
room for improvement, especially by the civilian-run Coalition Provisional
Authority in Baghdad. For that matter, I was almost a casualty of a roadside
bomb myself. Nevertheless, after 10 days traveling with soldiers and Marines
in both the north and south, I am encouraged by the resourcefulness of our
troops and struck by how different things look when seen firsthand. From
afar, chaos seems to reign in Iraq; up close, distinct signs of progress
emerge. Air travel isn't one of the more positive signs. There still is no
commercial air service to Iraq. I went in with Bing West, a former assistant
secretary of defense and a Marine veteran of Vietnam, on a Marine Lear jet
from Kuwait to Al Kut in central Iraq. From there, an old CH-46 helicopter
whisked us to the 1st Marine Division headquarters at Camp Babylon. Yes,
that Babylon. The former home of Nebuchadnezzar now houses rulers clad in
khaki camouflage. The headquarters of the 1st Marine Division was on the
grounds of one of Saddam Hussein's numerous palaces. A guest house had been
turned into a Combat Operations Center where officers and enlisted personnel
sat at laptop computers monitoring everything from enemy attacks to
electricity flows. A tent city around the building was full to overflowing
when we arrived. The Marines were in the process of transitioning out, while
Poles, Romanians, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Spaniards, and numerous other
coalition troops had already arrived to take their place. The formal handoff
to the coalition forces occurred on September 3, except in Najaf, where the
recent bombing has delayed it. For Marines who went through the war
sleeping in the dirt and eating MREs (Meals Ready to Eat), life at Camp
Babylon had gotten relatively civilized by the end of their tour. Most of
the tents had cots and air conditioning, "head" calls could be taken in the
privacy of a port-o-potty, and food came from a "chow hall" run by Indian
contract employees. Things will be positively luxurious for the allied
troops, who are having built for them, at U.S. expense, air-conditioned
shower and laundry facilities. The food wasn't bad--we had lobster my first
night and excellent cakes--but everyone from buck private to three-star
general waited in a long line before getting fed. From here the 1st Marine
Division directed battalions that ran all of south-central Iraq--up to 11
million people in the Shiite heartland. Major General James Mattis
laughingly called it the Blue Diamond Republic of Iraq, after the 1st
Division's nickname. If so, he was president of the republic, or, more
accurately, its benevolent dictator. Mattis is a legend inside the Marine
Corps, having led the Marines into both Afghanistan and Iraq. He was so
hell-bent on reaching Baghdad that he fired one of his brigade commanders
for not going fast enough. It was his men who toppled the statue of Saddam
Hussein in central Baghdad on April 9, signaling the end of the war.
Relatively short and trim, with a silver crewcut and owlish spectacles,
Mattis doesn't look particularly imposing. But when he opens his mouth it
becomes apparent that he's cut from the George S. Patton mold. Funny, blunt,
erudite, inspiring, and profane, he takes no guff and tolerates no
inefficiency. At nightly briefings with his staff, he dissected PowerPoint
presentations with laser-like questions that got to the heart of every
problem. The issues he dealt with were more appropriate to an imperial
proconsul than to a general: how to combat Islamic extremists, win over
ordinary people, distribute fuel, enforce law and order, and a thousand
other matters. Mattis was not the least bit fazed by the challenge. And he
had made substantial progress. While Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle were
still plagued by anti-American terrorism, life in the Blue Diamond Republic
was pretty calm. It might not seem that way in the wake of the August 29 car
bombing in Najaf. But despite that event, a substantial degree of normality
had returned to Najaf and neighboring towns. The streets I saw were
bustling, and the Marines enjoyed excellent relations with local leaders.
Not the least of their achievement is that no Marine has been killed by
hostile fire since May 1, when President Bush proclaimed "major hostilities"
at an end. Almost 70 Army soldiers have been slain in that period. This
success isn't a result of flooding south-central Iraq with soldiers. Mattis
never deployed more than 8,000 Marines, along with some Army civil affairs,
psychological operations, and military police units, to control an area the
size of Missouri. There is no doubt that the Marines' task was made easier
by the fact that the Shiites suffered under the old regime and welcomed
their liberation. But few analysts predicted in May that Shiite holy cities
like Najaf and Karbala would emerge as strongholds of pro-American
sentiment. Much of the talk back then was of Iranian infiltration and
Lebanese-style terrorism. That hasn't happened, at least not against
Americans, and every single Marine I met was convinced that the reason had
to do with their approach to peacekeeping, which they believe superior to
the more heavy-handed methods employed, at least initially, by Army units
that occupied Baghdad and the Sunni area to the immediate north and west.
The Marine strategy was based on three principles. First, do no harm. That
meant not alienating Iraqis by violating their religious or social customs.
Women, for instance, should not be subject to intrusive searches. When
talking to Iraqis, Marines were instructed to point their firearms away and
take off their sunglasses. Above all, it meant using as little firepower as
possible. As Mattis put it: "If someone needs shooting, shoot him. If
someone doesn't need shooting, protect him." The Marines showed restraint
when dealing with hostile crowds. They did not have a single incident like
the one that occurred in Fallujah in late April, when the 82nd Airborne
opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators, killing at least 12. Marines were
more likely to greet hostile crowds with free bottles of water than with
bullets, on the assumption that someone can't be too angry with you if he's
just accepted some water from you. The Marines' second guiding principle
was to win hearts and minds. The Marines repaired schools, distributed
candy, handed out free medical supplies, set up Rotary clubs, and undertook
myriad other charitable tasks. This earned them goodwill among the community
leading to increased intelligence about troublemakers. Their third
principle was to be ready to win a 10-second gunfight. While wanting to be
as open and friendly as possible, all Marines were told to be ready to open
fire at a moment's notice. When Army supply convoys get attacked by
fedayeen, they speed away, I was told. When Marine convoys got hit, they
were supposed to stop immediately and disgorge infantrymen to pursue the
attackers. Mattis insisted that even convoys carrying the Marines out of
Iraq retain a robust offensive capability. It all adds up to Mattis's
widely publicized slogan: "No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy" than a U.S.
Marine. To see how this yin-yang policy was carried out, we toured some
Marine units just before they headed home. OUR FIRST STOP was in the desert
southwest of Baghdad, home to a giant Army logistics base called Dogwood.
This area is different from the rest of the Blue Diamond Republic because
it's primarily Sunni, not Shiite, and it's experienced some of the same
security woes that have plagued the Sunni Triangle. In May and June, Army
convoys operating here suffered nonstop guerrilla attacks. During one
two-week period in May there were 51 ambushes. Although this was an Army
base, it was in the Marines' area of operations, so Mattis set up Task Force
Scorpion to clean up the mess. Composed of the 4th Force Reconnaissance (the
closest the egalitarian Marines come to having Special Forces), the 4th
Light Armored Regiment, some Army civil affairs soldiers, and a couple of
Marine infantry platoons, the task force never totaled more than 1,000
soldiers. But with aggressive patrolling, it managed to capture a number of
terrorists and reduce the number of attacks. Just before we arrived they had
nabbed a Republican Guard general and a four-man team that had been
mortaring Dogwood. The successful operations impressed the local people, who
flooded them with unsolicited tips. Based on that information they staged
surgical raids that usually involved no gunfire and resulted in the
surrender of a suspect. While aggressive against suspected terrorists, the
task force's commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Pappas, regularly
met with local sheikhs. As we were being briefed on Scorpion's operations,
an officer volunteered that they were planning a raid that very night. Would
we like to go along? Sure, I said, little suspecting what I was getting
myself into. Reveille came in total darkness at 4:30 A.M. on Friday, August
22, though the crump of a mortar shell landing several hundred meters from
our barracks already had me wide awake. By 5:30 we were on the move. Our
target was a suspected Baathist leader who had escaped a previous raid by
jumping into the Euphrates and swimming away in his underwear. We were
headed once again to his posh riverside home about an hour and a half from
Dogwood. Force Recon Marines, riding in two Humvees, were supposed to
conduct the raid. Three light armored vehicles went along to "sanitize" the
perimeter and deal with any "squirters," or fleeing suspects. Dressed in a
heavy flak vest and Kevlar helmet, I was squished into the back of one of
these tinpots. Without enough room to sit up straight or stretch out my
legs, and with virtually no portholes, I was left to stare for hours on end
at pictures of a soldier's girlfriend and a pinup of Pamela Anderson, both
attached by magnets to the vehicle hull. Soon the temperature would soar
over 120 degrees. Dust wafted through two open hatches manned by Marines
with M-16s. At about 6 A.M., our journey took an unexpected twist. As we
were driving by some fields, three remote-controlled bombs exploded by the
side of the road. Each was made from a 155 mm shell packed with explosives.
Two more unexploded bombs were later discovered by the roadside, one of them
full of white phosphorus. Had they all gone off when intended, hundreds of
pounds of explosives would have ripped into our column, almost certainly
causing serious casualties. Luckily the mission commander, Major Joe Cabell,
insisted on proper dispersion and the explosions passed harmlessly between
our vehicles. As soon as the attack occurred, the column pulled over to the
side of the road and Marines jumped out to hunt for the perpetrators. A
gunner saw what he thought were men fleeing through the fields and fired
warning shots. It's a good thing he didn't hit anyone: It later turned out
they were innocent farmers. As two Huey helicopters buzzed some nearby palm
trees, it started to look like a scene from a Vietnam War movie. With the
help of an interpreter, the Marines interviewed local farmers and found out
that a suspicious blue van had been seen in the neighborhood. We set off to
find it and eventually ran down a blue Volkswagen van. Its sole occupant, a
defiant young man in a track suit, tested positive for gunpowder residue on
his hands. The Marines handcuffed him with plexicuffs and tossed him into
the back of the light armored vehicle right next to your correspondent. The
corporal asked me to "cover" the suspect. I held the 9 mm pistol a bit
nervously (I'm more comfortable in think tanks than battle tanks) but did as
I was told. In a few minutes, the suspect, his head covered in a T-shirt,
was transferred to a Humvee for transportation back to base. We pressed on
with the raid, but it turned out the target wasn't home. We tried a couple
of nearby locations-- no dice. By 1:30 P.M. we were back at base, hot,
filthy, and exhausted. What was supposed to be a four-hour raid had turned
into an eight-hour trek across the countryside. I was whipped, but the
Marines weren't too discouraged. "It was a good day," said Corporal Daiman
Benney, a 26-year-old infantryman with a blond mustache. Reflecting on his
impending departure for home, he sighed, "I'll miss chasing bad guys." THIS
IS THE SHARP END of the Marine occupation. The next day we saw the warriors'
soft side during a visit to Karbala, site of the second-holiest Shiite
shrine. Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Lopez, commander of the 3rd Battalion,
7th Marine Regiment, was preparing to turn over command to a Bulgarian
contingent, but before he did so, he had some errands to run. He piled into
an SUV accompanied by a sergeant and Bing and me. None of us was wearing a
flak vest or helmet. The Marines were in their "soft covers," aka cloth
hats. Crammed into the back were dozens of silver soccer balls donated by
Nike. The Marines were planning to hand out 15,000 balls to the children of
Iraq, and Lopez wanted to make a start today. As we crawled through the
crowded city streets, we tossed soccer balls to any kids we saw. As soon as
the first ball came bouncing out, a tremendous excitement seized the
urchins. They ran after the SUV, arms outstretched, shouting "Mistah!
Mistah!" The kids were ecstatic and so was Lopez. With a big smile on his
face, he said, "I wish I could take all of them home with me." When the
ball supply was exhausted, we headed to city hall for Lopez's last meeting
with the provincial governor and city council. They were as happy to see him
as the kids. A consummate diplomat, Lopez exchanged flowery courtesies with
a long line of sheikhs and other local officials, and then got down to
business. Speaking through his interpreter (a Marine private born in
Kuwait), he spent 45 minutes wheeling and dealing over a variety of public
works projects. A Bulgarian colonel who will soon replace Lopez looked on to
learn how it's done. "You will be missed a lot," a local worthy told Lopez,
but the Marine is confident that the people of Karbala are well on the way
to self-government. "Democracy is embedded here," he said. That may be a
stretch, but there is no question that the U.S. occupation has made
tremendous strides among the Shiites, who comprise 60 percent of Iraq's
population. Driving through towns like Karbala and Najaf you see shops
overflowing with goods and Iraqi cops in blue uniforms directing traffic.
Violence hasn't entirely disappeared, as witness the August 29 car-bomb
murder of Ayatollah Hakim and scores of his followers, but little animosity
is directed toward the Americans, who are generally seen as liberators.
Every drive through Iraq in a U.S. military vehicle becomes a referendum on
the occupation. Do the people smile or frown as you pass? In the Sunni
Triangle, U.S. army patrols are often met with sullen stares. In central
Iraq, smiles and thumbs up are commonplace. Little kids are especially
enthusiastic. I felt like the queen of England waving regally at Iraqis as
we drove by in our three-Humvee convoy. Support for the occupation isn't
universal, of course. There are still some clerics who want a theocracy, and
they have received support from Iran and other sources. But they have gained
little traction among Iraqis. The most prominent troublemaker, Moqtada
al-Sadr, scion of a family of prominent ayatollahs, appears to be rapidly
losing support, as judged by the sparse attendance at his sermons in Najaf.
The attack on Ayatollah Hakim was the extremists' attempt to win through
violence what they could not achieve by peaceful means--an attempt that will
almost surely backfire by uniting the Shiites against the barbarians who
desecrated their holiest shrine. There was pressure from some U.S.
officials in the Coalition Provisional Authority to arrest Sadr because of
widespread rumors that he was involved in the murder of a pro-American imam
back in April. But in the absence of hard evidence, the Marines refused to
move against him. In their view, arresting him would only have turned him
into a martyr. Better to let his rival clerics steal away his support--which
seems to be happening. THIS IS ONLY ONE EXAMPLE of the rifts that divide
the military from the CPA, led by Ambassador L. Paul Bremer. It was apparent
during our visit that the CPA has done little to help the men and women in
uniform; some joked that the agency's initials stand for "Can't Provide
Anything." Even well-intentioned CPA initiatives have been badly bungled.
For instance, there was a plan to put 300,000 unemployed Iraqis to work
clearing agricultural canals. A good idea, but the Iraqi managers failed to
pay the workers for three weeks. In Diwaniyah, a major town in central Iraq,
the unhappy ditch diggers rioted in protest and destroyed a government
building. The Marines, who had not been involved in setting up this program,
were called in to deal with the resulting chaos. They dispersed the rioters
and paid the agricultural workers out of their own funds. Now they have set
up a system to ensure that the payments are made. One can only hope that the
coalition forces who are replacing the Marines will prove equally adept at
covering for the CPA's missteps. Much of the problem, no doubt, is that the
CPA lacks the readymade infrastructure available to a military division.
Starting from scratch, it has a hard time recruiting qualified candidates to
come to Iraq. And those it hires are likely to leave after a few months.
Former New York City police chief Bernard Kerik, for instance, arrived at
the beginning of the summer to run the justice ministry, and he's already
going home. But despite having a small organization, Bremer appears to be
centralizing many operations in Baghdad. This is an odd choice given the
vast differences between the Kurdish and Arab north, Sunni center, and
Shiite south. Running everything from the capital seems a big mistake.
Complaints about over-centralization are echoed by the 101st Airborne
Division. Like the Marines, the "Screaming Eagles" fought in the war, then
were called upon to garrison a large chunk of the country--the north--that
is moving toward peace and prosperity. The division is headquartered in
Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, with a population of 1.2 million. The
101st's entire area of operations encompasses 6 million people, including
Arabs, Kurds, Turkomen, and other ethnic groups. Like the Marines, the
101st is living in one of Saddam's palaces. Its accommodations are slightly
more posh; the troops have access to running water, the Internet, satellite
TV, even two swimming pools. But only a sadist would begrudge them a few
creature comforts. The Marines are heading home in September; the 101st will
be here until February 2004, a whole year. One of its brigades, the 3rd,
came here after spending most of 2002 in Afghanistan; now the "Rakkasans,"
as they're called, are deployed in the wasteland between Mosul and the
Syrian border. The 101st faces many thorny problems unique to its area,
such as land disputes between Arabs and Kurds, and a porous border with
Syria. But its approach is similar to that of the Marines. In their combat
operations center, the division commander, Major General David Petraeus, has
posted a sign that proclaims, "We are in a race to win over the people. What
have you and your element done to contribute to that goal today?" They have
done a good deal--almost all of it without the help of the CPA. On his own
initiative, General Petraeus decided to open the Syrian border to increase
trade, and to strike deals with Turkey and Syria to swap Iraqi oil for badly
needed electricity. The division has also restored telephone service and is
taking bids for cellular service. Like Mattis, Petraeus preaches respect
for Iraqis. Politeness and restraint are the order of the day. And when his
troops do have to use strongarm tactics, they take pains not to leave hurt
feelings behind. After they killed Uday and Qusay Hussein on July 22, the
division spent more than $100,000 to repair damage to the neighborhood where
the intense firefight occurred. One of the 101st's brigade commanders,
Colonel Joe Anderson, hopped in a humvee to take Bing West and me on a
whirlwind tour of Mosul. Projects underway range from training the Iraqi
police to providing medicine for a local hospital to painting schools to
refurbishing an Olympic-size swimming pool to building houses for refugees.
The list seems endless--and the 101st is doing all of it with its
commanders' own discretionary fund, much of which comes from seized assets
of the old regime. Aside from providing money for the military to spend,
Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority has as little presence in the north
as it has in the south. Its TV station, the Iraqi Media Network, is not
received here, thus ceding the propaganda war to anti-American outlets like
Al Jazeera. And it has failed to remedy the electricity and fuel problems
that plague the entire country. The northern region has less power now than
it did a few weeks ago because the central government in Baghdad is
siphoning its power to the center, much as Saddam used to. After visiting
both northern and southern Iraq, one gets the clear sense that the CPA needs
to take a different tack. The same might be said of the army units that
garrison Baghdad and the Sunni areas to the immediate north and west--the
4th Infantry Division, 1st Armored Division, and 3rd Armored Cavalry
Regiment. All are armor units less attuned to the demands of peacekeeping
than light infantry outfits like the 1st Marine Division and the 101st
Airborne. One officer of the 101st suggested that the situation in Baghdad
would be much better if his division, with its more nuanced approach, had
garrisoned the capital. The Marines, too, are convinced they could do a
better job there, which makes it all the more unfortunate that they are now
heading home. In the view of numerous 101st Airborne and 1st Marine
officers I talked to, sending more troops to Iraq isn't the answer. Smarter
policing tactics and better intelligence are what's required, and training
more Iraqi cops should be the top priority. They could use more funding for
such training and other reconstruction projects, since, as Petraeus says,
"money is ammunition." In spite of continuing attacks and various other
frustrations, both the 101st Division and the 1st Marine Division display a
fundamental optimism about Iraq and its future. As General Petraeus put it,
"I think we're winning up here. We have very good momentum." General Mattis
delivered the message in an earthier style: "We've got the bastards on the
run." Yet the world press, which lavished such attention on Iraqi looting
back in May, seems largely indifferent to the successful work of rebuilding
that has gone on since. The media naturally focus on bombings and shootings,
not on the reopening of schools or training of police officers. There is a
real danger of another Tet Offensive--an American military victory turned
into a public relations disaster back home. As we flew back to Kuwait on a
UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter, my thoughts were not on such cosmic strategic
questions. Rather, I thought of the American men and women who are serving
in Iraq. They have performed their work with incredible fortitude, humanity,
ingenuity, and skill under difficult and often dangerous circumstances. For
me, visiting Iraq was a 10-day adventure; for them, it is a 24/7 occupation.
I asked my Marine driver, a wispy-thin 22-year-old lance corporal named
William Eberly, why he'd enlisted. "I wanted to feel like I actually did
something for my country," he told me, "so I could call myself a true
American." It strikes me that Lance Corporal Eberly has done a lot for two
countries--the United States and Iraq--whether his countrymen appreciate it
or not. Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and
a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard. He is author of "The Savage
Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power."

The nine clowns are just the sideshow before the real circus begins. I predict that, come next summer at the Democrat convention, Hillary will step on stage, announce that she is running for President and will be nominated on the spot. Then the fun will begin.

Cheers.

I'm with Daryl on this one. Hillary will run, she will be nominated and she will utterly destroy Bush. The blue states vote for her, the retirees in Florida vote for her and a vast majority of women will vote for her, whether they agree with her or not, because she will be the first female candidate of a major party. That fact alone is sufficient to win.

After Hillary's victory, the Osamas, the Saddams, the Chiracs and the Annans will run the lunatic asylum. Welcome to the United States of Imitated Europe (but without the charming old buildings). The question won't be "why do they hate us", but "why do they mock us".

The whole primary process thus far has had the intellectual integrity of a food fight. It's time we make all of them wear party hats and funny noses. The scary part is that Saint Hillary has been able to remain above the fray.

You called it right - our electorate sits under the pile of presents and wants to know what else is under the tree. Here in California, it's pay raises for public employees, driver's licenses for illegals, and in the next week or so, an introduction to socialized medicine.

Party on.

The Life is Hell cartoon that also seemed to fit with watching this debate was the little kid looking up at a looming adult presence and saying, "Mistakes were made."

/f

Regarding Edwards, I remember Clinton's response to Pakistan's nuclear tests a few years back. Stripping away the empty rhetoric, it came down to, "But if you change your ways, you can be one of the cool kids! Everybody will say nice things about you."

For the Clintons and Edwardses of the world (and there are GOP equivalents aplenty), life is still a high-school popularity contest. As long as you're one of the cool kids, everything else is secondary--including reality.

What a train wreck. This election is going to end the Democratic party. I get more sure of it every time one of the dwarves opens their mouths. Whoever the victim, er, nominee is will be running the most viscious and polarizing campaign a lot of us have ever seen and its going to turn voters off in droves.

Just remember that this is about one thing for the Democrats...power. They ran the show in Washington for 40-some years and now they're out. Any other issue is just a means to that end for them, and that makes them extremely dangerous to the future of this country. Keep that theme in mind as you see their positions and campaigns progress...and see why that I will never consider voting for one of them.

Ben:

Learn to link, ok?

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic. Do you really mean to vote for the best Democrat?

I predict that, come next summer at the Democrat convention, Hillary will step on stage, announce that she is running for President and will be nominated on the spot. Then the fun will begin.

Yay!

I have long held the opinion that after 8 years of being embarassed by her husband, voting against Hillary is not something that should be limited to residents of New York. Yes, Bush has his faults, but my involuntary enrollment in the Scandal-of-the-Month club lapsed when he took office, and I'm still happy about it.

If I were in command of troops and they had the Democrats in their sights, I would issue the order: "Save your ammunition. They're too busy shooting themselves in the foot to be any threat to us." But I would still be watching them carefully.

"Or maybe it's us. We voters want it all: low taxes, big spending, the works. So perhaps it's unfair to bash the Democrats for promising to deliver the impossible things we require."

It's different people. Those who pay no taxes, or are rich enough not to care about taxes, or don't understand that spending comes *from* taxes - they are requesting more spending. People who pay taxes and feel the pinch usually want less spending (depending on the ambient levels), with exceptions for things like war.

The first group tend toward the Democrats, which is one reason they incessantly try to increase the numbers of people who don't pay taxes (while politicians themselves join those who can ignore taxes). Republicans do the opposite, though I like to believe more out of ideology than power-grabbing.

No contradiction - just conflict.

"We voters want it all: low taxes, big spending, the works. So perhaps it's unfair to bash the Democrats for promising to deliver the impossible things we require.

But, damnit, somebody has to be the grownups in this country. If we voters are the problem, then we need someone responsible enough to tell us "no" now and again."

Completely, unquestionably, on point.

People, have we all flunked math? If you want massive government spending to do everything down to wiping your ass, it WILL cost MONEY, money that comes from US, the taxpayers of this country. No one likes to think of the negatives though, it's all ganjabrownies & pay-per-view for them -- "why, some people may have to take RISKS! Some people may have to take care of themselves! How can you possibly fathom such a thing! You fascist bastard, you!"

*slap* SNAP OUT OF IT!!!!!!!!!!!

Listen to yourselves. You complain when big government eats away at your livelihood, but you don't want them to stop doing what requires them to do it. You consider yourselves individuals, yet you believe that everyone can finish the game at the same time. You cheer and pat yourselves on the back when your involvement in the market nets you a gain, but whine like toddlers when you lose. You brag and boast about how much you support "freedom" yet vote against anyone that doesn't wish to legislate morality.

You, quite simply, are selling out the rest of us. Plain and simple.

As long as you support burning the candle at both ends, as long as you continue to empower this political feedback-loop from hell to consume our lives, as long as you expect to reach the moon w/ a rubberband...YOU are the fascists.

Really, the entire mess is pathetic. If someone were to come along and tell it like it is, revealing the futility of the current method of operation, they would not even break double digits in votes.

We are too comfortable for our own good.

"somebody has to be the grownups in this country. If we voters are the problem, then we need someone responsible enough to tell us "no" now and again. "

This is one of the reasons Senators originally were not elected directly by the people. The body was meant to act as a check against the more volatile and "common" House. All amendments from the previous century's teen years should be repealed, not just the one.

Ah, but Patrick, you can make a fair case that the wonders of advanced gerrymandering have largely made the House chosen by state legislatures these days, at least in large states.

The most responsible Democrat is clearly Lieberman, to answer the original question. There is, however, no chance in hell that he will get the nomination.