Bush has turned the country into a laughing stock

* in florida:

"A young rising star in the Republican Party (a good-looking former page in the state senate) has boasted to witnesses of his sexual relationship with Charlie Crist, the frontrunner in the Florida governor's race who has repeatedly denied that he is gay."

* arkin has a touching post about Marla Ruzicka.

* athenae:

"This is only a downside to Democrats if they let it be, if they let themselves be attacked, if they start pretending it's 2004 instead of 2006, and running scared again, and letting others define them, and dithering around taking 50 positions at once or hammering out some stupid halfway policy instead of just saying, "Fuck off, already, with your backward-ass thinking, and your political opportunism, and your shamelessness, and your impotent rage. Fuck off to someplace where you can think about how to fix this country instead of making one part of it afraid of the other part. Fuck off, because we've heard nothing but the same from you for six years now, and we're not better off, we're worse off, so when you start getting some things right maybe we'll listen to you on this, you selfish, small-minded, anti-American, anti-family, anti-freedom, anti-love excuse for a candidate for office. We don't want to hear word one from you about our lives anymore.""

* glenn:

"Bush's advisors have him throwing around buzzphrases designed to suggest that our commitment is something other than permanent. For instance, we are giving "benchmarks" to the Iraqi government to accomplish certain objectives (but they are purely suggestive and nothing will happen if they fail to meet them; also, "benchmarks" are, as the President explained, totally different than -- worlds apart from -- "timetables," which only Defeatocrats and cut-and-runners use). Additionally, the President wants everyone to know that we are patient but our patience is not infinite (but we are willing to stay no matter how long "it" takes -- "it" being the creation of a stable, unified Iraqi government -- because defeat means leaving before the job is done, and we will not be defeated).
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That's the most tragic part of what we have done -- we can't possibly achieve the goals we ostensibly have. And if we ever did manage to do so, the situation we will have created will likely be worse than it was before the invasion. That might be the very definition of a strategic disaster -- starting a discretionary war in which you can't possibly achieve your goals and, even if you did achieve them (i.e., best case scenario), you create a situation making matters worse for yourselves (while generating unprecedented resentment in most of the world)."

America - your president and his cronies has turned the country into a laughing stock. except it's not funny. watch this one minute dem ad.