If there's one thing you an always count on Kilgore to do, it's let you down.  He's just too fragile.

Richmond Times-Dispatch Sep 2, 2005

Partisans and ideologues probably rehearsed their arguments before Katrina slammed ashore and Lake Pontchartrain poured into New Orleans. From The New York Times to The Wall Street Journal, vulgar voices from across the spectrum have used the catastrophe to score political points.

Calamities may be impossible to prevent, but human beings -- endowed with compassion and ingenuity -- never stop trying to mitigate suffering. Yet while worthy ends often are achieved by asking tough questions and assessing real blame, there is a huge difference between an honest search for answers and a sullen exercise in gamesmanship.

Quips and insults traded by left, right, and center offer little comfort to residents stunned by Nature's caprice. There is much to be said for a decent interval. Humility and a sense of proportion are virtues, too. "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." Wittgenstein's aphorism applies not only to epistemology but also to human empathy. The necessary message to Gulf Coast says only, "We are here."

It's day five...where are we?  We had aid in the Phillipines by day two.  Where are we?  We have a genuine refugee situation.  Where are we?

President Bush was campaigning and on vacation while the situation was happening and he didn't make a peep about NO until Wednesday.  Where was he?  The LA National Guard has 1,200 troops coming back from Iraq.  Where were they? 

These are legit questions being raised now.  The fact that this is Republican leadership as usual is no surprise.  "Borrow and spend" tactics leave us little wiggle room when it comes to problems like this tragedy.  Surpluses give us flexibility...something I don't think Republicans understand.

Congratulations.  I didn't think it could be done, but you have somehow managed to wed Hurricane Katrina with raising taxes in Virginia.

If I hadn't seen it myself, I wouldn't have believed it.

So what do they do - they fabricate and say random crap about Tim Kaine. 

I suspect they (Kilgore peeps) are trying to top Mo when he said that we shouldn't be too hard on Mr. Murtaugh when he e-mailed the entire press world the Kilgore thought process (or lack there of) for a proposed attack on Tim Kaine. 

You just don't have the gift, Mr. Murtaugh,  go have some Cheetos and watch a "movie". 

But what about the essence of it?

What has Tim Kaine done to fight methamphetamine?

I can't find anything.

Didn't he have three years as LG to introduce a bill?

Kilgore at least put in legislation that upped the penalties.

As far as I know, Kaine did nothing.  Which means he actually might have been watching TV and eating cheese doodles.

Maybe it's a minor thing, but I don't think these guys really get much of anything.

Also, in 2001 Mark Warner, Tim Kaine, and Jerry Kilgore all supported letting regions have transportation referendums if they wanted to raise additional revenue for transportation projects. Many pundits following the '01 election said that Warner's plan to trust the people on transportation was a major reason for his victory. Now, in 2005, Kilgore still supports Regional transportation authorities, but Kaine is vehemently against. Interestingly enough, in 2001 every major paper supported them---as did Democrats---now, in 2005, while Kilgore is still in support, every major paper opposes them---and so do Democrats. What is going on here? Seems like Kilgore is the only consistent  one, while Democrats have gotten new talking points and completely abandoned what they claimed to support fullheartedly just four short years ago. And you wonder why Kaine is losing by 7 points.

Why is Libby under indictment or something but not Novak?

I am tired of tendentious print journalists getting special treatment. Novak is free to break the law, RaisingKaine and other blogs get regulated by the FEC.

I don't disagree that the failures of the Bush administration was a factor in Kaine's win but I don't think his visit was a significant blow to Kilgore's campaign.

It would be nice if someone had acknowledged today that Kaine's victory begin weeks ago and  could be easily tracked by a steady growth his polling numbers. While Kilgore failed to progress. This was pointed out frequently in the last couple of weeks of the campaign. Of course I liked hearing that but remained very scared and worried.

Certainly the spectacular self destruction of the Bush administration as they bounced from one calamity and embarrassment to another was perceived as a Republican problem  and made voting for Kaine even more satisfying for Democrats and easier for Republicans to consider an alternative.

I think it is just spin to suggest that it required a visit by Bush for voters to make the connection. I think that Bush, Cheney, Rove, Myers and FEMA have been on our minds for weeks. Every time I heard Kilgore tell us that Kaine was untrustworthy I just considered the source.

When I think of the word "Republican" it isn't "trustworthy" that comes to mind. No, I think that with every new story about Kilgore or his mom, that Jerry was just one more bird infected with the same sort of contagion that seems to  have corrupted so many of the current Republican flock currently nesting across the Potomac in Washington. If only their was some hope of them all leaving for the south this winter.

The Richmond Times Dispatch in Wednesday's editorial also said that "...Kilgore did not deserve to lose, the GOP deserved a sock to the chops..."

Well, I might buy that if I was convinced that the GOP forced Kilgore to take his campaign into the gutter with an unremitting hail of attacks on Kaine's character and accomplishments.

No, I think that the real blame falls to Kilgore himself for choosing to model his campaign after the GOP's reprehensible attacks that denigrated Kerry's Vietnam heroism and managed to transformed Bush from a rich kid who avoided any danger of combat into a heroic flag draped fighter pilot.

If Kilgore had been willing to focus on issues, distance himself from Washington and avoid the inevitable suicide of attacking the good name of an opponent of obviously stellar character, Kilgore's campaign might have not have sickened so many of his potential supporters.

No, Jerry is a big boy and he freely choose his own gang of campaign advisors and he must take full credit for the result of those choices.

The question is, how do we do that?

Political activism only begins with the election!

For those interested in the coming conservative aristocracy, take an hour and review this bad boy:

http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/conservatism.html

you'll be glad you did.

Much easier to just tie a sink line between discredited socialism and struggling Liberalism and invalidate both in one fell swoop.

Wonder why the left hasn't tied radical conservatism to fascism to achieve the same ends?  Because while every aspect of conservatism, especially the neo-con philosphies would easily fit in the fascist mold, there are aspects of fascism that do not quite fit in with conservatism.  Genocide comes to mind... but then Bennet comes up with something like this and I'm less inclined to give these weak-willed, soft minded, empty hearted, hypocritical cowards the benefit of the doubt any longer.

We have to do a better job of opening their eyes so they actually see that there are solutions (despite the fact "the poor will always be with us" and despite the fact that no program will raise everyone out of the mire--- some DO have character defects, and are going to be lost). One way to the minds of educable conservatives is to point out that money spent at the start saves beaucoup money later, as Kaine says: $1 on pre-kindergarten will save $17 in later remedial classes, not to mention crime costs down the road. Maybe it would even be cheaper, Mr. Bennett/Hitler, than abortion or genocide.

You have essentially wasted an entire page condeming Bennet for arguing against the idea of abortion as crime control. However, by not telling your readers the entire story, you make it sound as though that is what he was advocating.

Hmm, I don't think this is it -- clearly there are even more aspects of progressivism or liberalism that do not quite fit in with socialism, but that doesn't stop them.  I think it's more that liberal leaders are less comfortable with demonizing their opponents just because they disagree with them, and conservative leaders have less concern with whether or not their demonizing is true as long as it works.  Witness that it is generally considered completely out of bounds to call someone on the right wing a fascist or a Nazi, but right-wing commentators call liberals communists every day, and "friends of Stalin" with regularity.

When I was a kid, if I ever had made any comment even slightly offensive, my mother made me apologize and own up to my actions.  That was a virtue she taught me and a virtue I will pass on to my children. If only Bennett and company had that same "virtue..."

I just got through reading an article over at RaisingKaine.com and it got me to thinking. One of the most absurd and outrageous lies the Cons tell is that "liberals" (which is usually meant to label everyone to the left of Tom Delay) "don't support the troops." In fact, just as there hasn't been a flag burning in the US in decades (despite the Con lie that liberals go around burning it), there haven't been incidents when people didn't support the troops. In reality, even at the height of the Viet Nam war, overwhelmingly, most people --even those against the war--supported the troops. We could distinguish between stupid, "ignorant and deceptive chickenhawk politicians" and the troops. And it was the politicians whom war protesters opposed. Most protestors despised Robert McNamera, who not long ago, in "Fog of War" tells of lessons learned. GOP and media spin notwithstanding, those who did not support those serving were an extremely small minority. For the "troops" weren't seen as that at all, but rather they were our husbands, sons, brothers, fathers, uncles, and friends. Now they could also be the daughters, mothers, sisters, friends, significant others, etc. A smaller number of women served back in the Viet Nam era.

I was not originally against the Viet Nam War, but soon learned we'd been mislead. Many of us were honest enough to confront a president of our own party in 1968. (Where are the Republicans now when the lies have been worse?) It was the pressure we brought to bear on him that forced Lyndon Johnson to resign. I hadn't been involved in politics until then. I was a young wife with two small children. But I found time to do some small things to protest the misuse of our troops and work for change. It was always the troops. How dare Johnson take these lives for granted? But we never, ever, would have turned on our families and friends, or other Americans. They were part of us! Even during the period when I opposed the war, I and hundreds of others stood on shore, cheering as my brother's ship came in into safe harbor from Viet Nam. This was played out as month and after month, and year after year, our loved ones returned. But many of us lost loved ones in those or earlier wars.

War protest has always been about doing what's right by the troops. The Cons can say otherwise until they are --er, well...they can't be blue in the face, cause they can't understand "Blue." But if they even tried, they'd see they are buying into a myth.

But their myth does not get to drive what is defined as supporting the troops. And here's where most of the trouble lies, I believe. Blind rubber stamping war, callously sending them to slaughter for insufficient reason, will never be a requirement. Indeed, I believe that the burdon of proof rests with the those wishing to deploy our national treasure for their political ends. Iraq was never about protecting Americans, only the interests of Big Oil and hegemony. Ignoring this and blindly being yes-persons to such a misuse, sells short the interest of the real freedom (not Bush's fake flauanting of the word) that our military is sworn to protect.

But most of all, if we really support and love them, we will never agree to wreckless foreign policy or approve needless belligerence by hypocritical leaders. Besides, many more Democrats have served in the military than Republicans. The GOP leadership and pundit class has so few who've served it's astonishing how readily they'd commit the lives of others. Only in BUSHWORLD is skipping out on your guard Duty seen as preferable to actually saving lives in war. But, then the Swift Boat "Vets for Truth" were never about truth.

We support the troops by loving family and friends, and even strangers, who serve and working to assure they have what they need. We say: Take care of them when they are sent into harm's way. Don't make them pay for their body armor, send them without it, or supply them with defective vests (as was recently revealed). Treat their medical needs with respect, caring and funding. Don't make them pay their own way home (that has happened). Don't leave them to depend on food stamps. Generally do more for the troops than to Halliburton or Bechtel execs. And never, ever take them for granted.

It's time to stop the knee-jerk psuedo-patriotism which pretends to capture what it means to be an American, but really creates and reacts to stereotypes. We don't have to be told. We already know. Some of the leaders of the other side apparently don't.

"Support our troops. Don't Misuse Them."

Also, Democrat veterans are usually former draftees, while most Republicans are volunteers. At least that seems to be my experience when meeting vets.

PS  Can you right-wingers ever make ANY point without either a) an ad hominem attack; or b) referring to Bill "Peace and Prosperity" Clinton? Just askin'

Clearly, if he goes to one funeral, he would have to go to them all. Did Bill Clinton go to all 18 funerals of the Army Rangers who were killed in Somalia?

I'm sorry, Walt, were you under the impression that Bill "responsible for all sin, evil, and bad stuff that ever happens in the universe" Clinton sent the Rangers into Somalia?

That honor would go to George HW Bush who had lost the Presidency and just couldn't ring in the new year without some bloodshed.

mmm...

A care package is nice, but don't you think the families of the Troops would be better served if the Republicans didn't cut Veteran's benefits and healt insurance to pay for their freeloading billionaire taxcuts?

Birds of a feather .....

And George Will: "the president has forfeited his right to be trusted as a custodian of the Constitution....To have selected her, when conservative jurisprudence has J. Harvie Wilkinson, Michael Luttig, Michael McConnell and at least a dozen others on a bench deeper than that of the New York Yankees, is scandalous."

I could go on and on with quotes from right-wing commentators the past few days on this crony pick.  James, are you seriously going to be the last one left defending George W. "37% approval rating and falling" Bush, Tom "2 Indictments, Do I Hear Another" DeLday, Karl "Revealing an Undercover CIA Officer's Name is Treason" Rove, etc?  Have fun. 

Oh, and don't forget to keep blaming Bill Clinton. Even though he hasn't been President now for 5 years, it's still obviously all his fault. Always has been.  Always will be.