First off... any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here, and here. Die spambots, die! And now... here are all the links submitted by members of the Watcher's Council for this week's vote. Council li...

In retrospect, the Clintoons autobiographies were the cheapest books in my lifetime. The price, the publishers paid, breaks down to only one dollar ($1) a lie

I encouraged Cheat Seeking Missiles to write about "This is your brain on politics" by Sharon Begley of Newsweek, promising to weigh in on the article too. And then ... I forgot! He came through, wonderfully and a second time too. I get annoyed when ...

Weird strategy, having another guy win the deep south, that being Wallace in 1968. Oh and 1972 was a real squeaker. Nixon, along with the majority of both blacks and whites, opposed busing. Liberal Democrats had moved so far left socially that opposition to busing could only be due to racism rather than not wanting your kid on a bus two hours a day for the parent's penance.

Goldwater's state rights views could be viewed as racist, Nixon and Reagan's, I just don't see it.

I referred not to the initial support of both the Afghanistan and Iraq responses, but to the later sniping from the Democratic leadership. Once you go to battle, I believe you should see it through. I am of the Winston Churchill school of fighting wars, which can be boiled down to two words: "Never Surrender".

So far as Senator Nunn's quote is concerned, I just disagree with it. Although I supported him with money and work for years, I didn't agree with everything he said or did. This is one statement with which I disagree. A UN resolution authorized the actions against Saddam. To me that seemed enough.

you have once again missed my point, and seek to believe a rewritten history. all I have said is true, and here is more.

Your hero's are the ones who removed God's laws from our education system and almost destroyed the great American culture and most certainly devastated the family structure of those Americans who skin color happens to be black.

also your hero's most certainly sealed them into a new type a bondage trying to fix a horrible mistake that your hero's refuse to see that they have made.

they seek to fight their own bigotry and racism, with bigotry and racism and you seek to blame a couple of republicans and couple of your own cause their strategy is not working?

I could go all night, but your a smart person, and I bet if you slowed down and took a hard look at this with an open mind I would not have to.

I dont know if we can continue this conversation, but I wonder what actions, post 9/11, that you supported, that the Dems did not.

There was unanimous support for going after al-Q, and the Taliban. Some Dems supported Iraq, but now most all (as well as significant majorities of Americans in general) realize that was a mistake. It has not diminished al-Q at all, thats for sure.

So I wonder - are you one to believe that Iraq was a good move in the war against al-Q?

Or would you agree with Sam Nunn?

"“We’ve lost a lot of prestige and credibility in the world,” Nunn told the AP. “I definitely think we made a real mistake going to war without the consensus of other countries … we can’t occupy a country successfully without cooperation from neighbors and countries around the globe.

“I think we’re paying a very severe price for that right now,” the former Democratic senator added. “It was the worst strategic error I’ve seen in modern times by the United States.”"

Obama-Nunn always struck me as a very compelling ticket :)

So long as the Democrats continue the positions they have espoused as to what action was appropriate after 9/11 and their general approach to national defense issues, old guys like me aren't going there.

I would welcome another (Scoop) Jackson or Sam Nunn democrat to support and cheer on because I have a libertarian streak that is not enamored with some of the pandering to the so-called "religious right". While saying that, I want to point out in the spirit of full disclosure that I am a life-long professing Christian (with an "inquiring time-out" from ages 18-25).

Nonetheless, for once you and I see eye to eye on our analysis of the political dynamics at play here.

It is very refreshing. Thanks for engaging.

Yes. I was speaking of the larger dynamics in political history. I did not mention, and perhaps should have, that there are northern Republicans who have roots in the party that stretch back to the days of Lincoln, and who have been committed to equality all along. Apologies, if appropriate.

They are, however, a dying breed. Take New England for example - formerly home to the very paradigm of rock-ribbed Republicanism. Now a vast sea of blue - with only one GOP house member from the entire region. Many northern republicans have become Democrats, although at a slower rate than the Southerners have realigned. With this current administration, and perhaps with a future Thompson candidacy (or Gingrich ! ), this process is, and will continue accelerating, I suspect.

You missed the part where, in the mid-sixties, Republicans were in the minority in both Congress and the Senate, but they supported and assured passage of Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1964 and 1968.

Many of us on that side of the aisle still support the letter and spirit of those laws. We just don't support stretching them beyond recognition.

"Once again Ken you ignore the facts and history and totally reverse them."

Talk about ignoring facts and history!

Yes, GA, we all know the history of the Democratic Party, and how the Republicans spearheaded the fight against slavery.

And we also know how, after the Civil War, the Republicans became the party of the new industrialists - the bosses, so to speak. And how the northern Democratic party became the party of the workers and immigrants. And how, when blacks began their internal migration to the north they gravitated toward the Democrats because of their status as lower class, and lower middle class workers.

And how this set up a sharp divide within the Democratic party - between its southern half, which was segregationist, and its northern parts, which were pro-worker, including blacks. And we all know how this played out, starting especially in 1948. The northern Democrats started their takeover of the party and set it on the path to become champions of civil rights. And the Dixiecrats revolted and started to leave the party - under the leadership of Strom Thurmond (ever hear of him?).

And yes, we all know how the Democrats (northern) under Kennedy became the champions, in the political world, for black civil rights. And how one southern Democrat with vision (LBJ) tried to muscle the rest of the party to follow. Of course he realized it wouldnt happen (we now have lost the south for a generation he said, as he signed the Voting Rights Bill). And of course it provoked another wave of southerners leaving the party (George Wallace, ever heard of him?).

And then of course, we all remember Richard Nixon, who understood these dynamics perfectly well, and who set out to build a new Republican majority with his southern strategy, to sweep up all those disaffected Southern ex-Democrats who left the party because the Dems were now for civil rights.

And of course we all saw that come to fruition. When Reagan launched his candidacy in Philadelphia MS, with a speech about "states rights" in a city that had no claim to fame other than as the site of the murder of civil rights workers - it was not an accident.

The modern Republican party is built on the prejudices and attitudes of those Southerners that the Democrats rejected. They are not only in your party now, they are your base. They drive your agenda - and you are welcome to them.

That is the great tradgedy of the modern Republican party. Coming from the tradition of Lincoln, they opportunistically leapt at the chance to incorporate the racist ex-Democrats, complete with their one-party instincts. Its worked for ya. It is blind, willful ignorance of history to deny that.

Is that your explanation for why almost all minority voters are Democrats?

would you for once read what I wrote and deal with your own donkypoop, instead of responding with an arrogant liberal talking point or an ego maniacal dismissive statement of how you have supreme control over your subjects.

and if you would had kept reading I sort of eluded to that point.

or should I have said anybody can buy votes Ken, and I'm glad you admit to it, now if you would only convince you leaders to do the same and then turn yourselves into the proper authority's.