My wife walks out of the mall with our two kids and our nephew and goes to get in her car and she notices something that wasn't there when she went in:

Hmmph. Obama is not a Communist, and to say that he is requires employment as a right-wing radio host or editorialist.

More after the jump...

You know the scene. Arthur confronts The Black Knight in the woods. Cuts of his arm, his leg. His other arm. His other leg. And the Knight keeps insisting that he can win. "Merely a flesh wound" he says.

Hillary Clinton doesn't have to worry about whether she destroys Obama's chances in the general between now and the Democratic Convention because she doesn't care whether she is on the ballot as a Democrat. The Presidency will be hers in 2008 or it never will be, and she knows it.

This is why, if she and Penn fail to secure the nomination by legitimate, sneaky, underhanded or plain-old illegitimate ways, they won't mind. They won't care. They will pull a Lieberman and run Hillary as an 'Independent' Democrat.

I have no evidence to support this whatsoever! Until Randi Rhodes threw the idea out there the other day I had never even given it a moment's thought. I'm scared to write this on the off chance I'm wrong and Penn or some other Hillary supporter will read it, but... what if... would she?

Some would say worse.  Daschle:

"It's comments like [Wolfson's] that make me question whether we do have the same standards," said the former Senate Majority Leader. "I don't think that you can make a statement like that and consider yourself within the bounds of civility. I mean, this shouldn't be tolerated. It's not acceptable, and it's unfortunate."

More after the jump...

Kos is on the front page right now telling Michigan Democrats to go vote for Romney in Michigan's half-sanctioned primary next Tuesday in an attempt to get Romney a win in order to keep the GOP fractured for an extended period of time. This is a good idea, and, being a Michigan Democrat, I might do it.

BUT, for the record, Kos says that Michigan's governor, Jennifer Granholm miscalculated in pushing Michigan's luck with the primary scheduling gods after receiving a warning that our delegates would be ignored. I don't remember it going down as Granholm's idea. I remember both the Republican and Democratic leaders of the legislature pushing for this, and Granholm signing it. But I also disagree with the ENTIRE process, in that Iowa and New Hampshire have a lock, followed by fucking Nevada and South Carolina?

Whuh? Exsqueeze me?

So we have Corn, New Hampshire, Gambling and Gun totin' Jesus before we can have a middle-class manufacturing behweemoth and everyone just sits back and lets it happen? In fact, the DNC holds the very order hostage?

So, lemme get this straight.

Selectively choosing facts to prove the argument that the Bush Administration was warned about likely horrors in post-invasion Iraq is bad, because it lends too much credence to "what seem[s] to be important now".  No one wants us to make a big deal of the fact that the President had two pictures of post-invasion Iraq painted, and obviously picked the wrong fucking one to believe in.

full text of email after the jump...

We can all be certain that the latest terror alert news has nothing whatsoever to do with the upcoming election, Halloween, or the fact that the Lieberman loss on Tuesday was seen by the GOP as a very bad sign of the incredible lack of confidence in the Administration and its policies.  I know I will.

Here, we see Chertoff and Gonzalez announcing the news...

Phase I has been out for 24 and a half months.  Roberts has repeatedly said that Phase 2 is on its way, and repeatedly done nothing.  He has stalled, changed his story, backtracked, sidestepped, missed deadlines, and delayed the report for not one but TWO election cycles, 2004 and 2006.

Additionally, the passage of time warps the perceptions of each party.  As time goes on, one looks back and remembers the same event through the filter of faded memories and new experiences, reality, new events and perspective.  The other party does the same, albeit with their own version of that filter.  Different perceptions of the event, originally similar or wildly different, can change drastically.  Perhaps bringing the two perceptions back together or shoving them further apart than ever.  

I know Bush feels strongly about this issue.  I know it's his first veto.  And that he must know his veto goes against the wishes of the majority of Americans.  But even given the circumstances I don't really think this little jab was necessary:

Baghdad.  Ancient capital city of Iraq.  Home of the fortified Green Zone from which Americans rarely venture.  Baghdad is being abandoned.  Can you imagine?

Instead, you have to dive in on all fronts and fight for what's right.  You have to fortify your stomach and prepare for the worst things your enemies might throw at you.  You have to train, and you have to plan, and you must, above all else, be willing to go to lengths your enemy would never expect.

But it is really the path to Democratic defeat.  The path that Republicans and pundits obsessively attempt to keep Democrats on, in order to re-reinforce the meme of Democratic weakness in the face of Republican supremacy.

All of it is bullshit, really.  But Digby is right to point to it as one of the principle self-fulfilling prophecies that emanates from the Washington bubble despite the waves of contradictory evidence bombarding that bubble from all across the nation.

He the die-hard, Bush-loving Republican that believes in smaller government and the Bush Doctrine, and I the Union-raised liberal that thinks government should help make everyone's lives better without playing favorites and that the Bush Doctrine was sold on false pretenses and didn't play out well at all.

Aside from revealing my affection for a certain late 80's/early 90's metal band, my title is a genuine question.

What is civil about it?

We had already overthrown the Taliban and begun to turn Afghanistan towards a better path.  Bin Laden was on the run but would be captured at any moment.  I was certain we would get Bin Laden--not a doubt in my mind.  But Al Qaeda operated in cells.  Living in a military-heavy state, I rationalized why an enemy of the United States might target our area.  If a base was the target, depending on the weapon and wind conditions, my family could fall victim, and reducing the chances of that had to be my goal.

Host A - I wonder if these stupid democrats are gonna try and filibuster the Alito nomination, they're only delaying the inevitable.

Host B - They already delayed it--they delayed it for a week.

Yes, the odds of successfully using the filibuster to cast BTK Sammy in with the dust bunnies of history were all but nil.

Yes, the democrats that attempted to push the filibuster knew this.

Yes, so did the rest of America.

But as a friend of mine used to be all too fond of saying on Mondays during football season, "That's why they play the games."