Persona bashing being about as substantive a basis for voting as name-affinity, I think it's time for some more specifics from the candidates.

How are we going to pay for what they want without hurting the economy?

How to strike the right balance between foreign investment in US based jobs and outsourcing of US based jobs?

How to energize the economy with rewards for green tech?

How to end a patent system flaw allowing big buyers of innovation to sit on development?

And so on.

Just thought we should use some synonyms to put the empty form objections to rest.

Last time we saw these terms, the president's initials were RWR.

..is supremacy over ourselves so that nothing and no one can lead us to do wrong while we lead ourselves to do what's right.

It's a simple yet difficult truth at a time too many have believed that their fate is in others' hands, and if the others are feared or hated, violence comes to spoil the good life for all. There's no supremacy in that, just more degradation and lack of progress for all. Wisdom beckons the foolish to reason and be fools no more.

Here are Barack Obama and Michelle, from a part of America and Americans that once were made to act as chattel by force, and rather than seeking supremacy over those who immorally subjugated their ancestry, sought supremacy over self, through study, working through the law and showing a sacrifice of pride to do what is right toward others. And here they are about to be nominated as the First Family of the United States of America.

It is precisely by mastering one's own spirit and doing good to overcome evil that lasting peace and well being is possible. That is the bedrock truth of all human relations. Ignored, there is discord.

While I differ with some of the Obama's premises, principally about abortion, I laud their example and point out that not even those on the Right have eliminated the grisly practice by leading a change of heart in the nation by example. A change of heart and mind is more permanent than a dead letter law on a book and preferable if it actually saves more lives.

And so I have hope that if Barack Obama is elected President of the United States, he'll inspire a change on the face of America toward the helpless in the womb as well as out, and the national focus will gradually turn toward service to others, from the womb to the grave. And all the people said...

Amen.

..is supremacy over ourselves so that nothing and no one can lead us to do wrong while we lead ourselves to do what's right.

It's a simple yet difficult truth at a time too many have believed that their fate is in others' hands, and if the others are feared or hated, violence comes to spoil the good life for all. There's no supremacy in that, just more degradation and lack of progress for all. Wisdom beckons the foolish to reason and be fools no more.

Here are Barack Obama and Michelle, from a part of America and Americans that once were made to act as chattel by force, and rather than seeking supremacy over those who immorally subjugated their ancestry, sought supremacy over self, through study, working through the law and showing a sacrifice of pride to do what is right toward others. And here they are about to be nominated as the First Family of the United States of America.

It is precisely by mastering one's own spirit and doing good to overcome evil that lasting peace and well being is possible. That is the bedrock truth of all human relations. Ignored, there is discord.

While I differ with some of the Obama's premises, principally about abortion, I laud their example and point out that not even those on the Right have eliminated the grisly practice by leading a change of heart in the nation by example. A change of heart and mind is more permanent than a dead letter law on a book and preferable if it actually saves more lives.

And so I have hope that if Barack Obama is elected President of the United States, he'll inspire a change on the face of America toward the helpless in the womb as well as out, and the national focus will gradually turn toward service to others, from the womb to the grave. And all the people said...

Amen.

A discussable issue for both sides in this election cycle is what historical evidence suggests about a presidential contender's (One) selection of perceived strong or weak VP candidates (Two) to an (a) executive ticket and (b) a presidential administration. It's open for discussion. Here are a few observations about the structure of the executive ticket beginning with the contrast to a strong Two to a strong One. [This post will leave out the factor of prejudice as something so irrational so as not to be able to make rhyme or reason of it -- that is, blind fear doesn't rationalize whether the prejudicially feared candidate would be good under any circumstance.]

Recalling George H.W. Bush and Dan Quayle, a Two with less experience or accomplishment burdens and bolsters One. On one hand, such a Two highlights the greater qualifications of One. On the other, the concern that Two is a heartbeat away from the Oval Office dampens the ticket for some who see intellectual breadth, depth and verbal facility as essentials. Yet the public may be persuaded that Two will provide continuity since Two will not know what else to do but effect One's plans should One leave office for any reason.

The prospect of a lesser Two makes the electorate focus on the 'indispensibility' of One. Doing so enhances the notion that One MUST have known what One was doing picking Two, so who are we to question the Great One on his decision. Plus, the public reasons, it's all of the folks around One or the One-Two who really run the show, right?

Focusing on One's judgment in Picking Two repeatedly leads to One's experience, and One's past accomplishments as barometers for how trustworthy the selection of Two must be. That's good for One if One carries deep past experience and bad for One if he or she doesn't.

Other historical examples of weaker Two to stronger One? Not Lyndon B. Johnson to John F. Kennedy. That was a strong Two to a strong One. What about Gerald Ford to Richard Nixon? Was Gerald Ford inexperienced in executive affairs when picked by Nixon? Not really. So Johnson and Ford were strong Twos who filled in reasonably well following the loss and toss of their Ones.

Al Gore to Bill Clinton? While Bill Clinton had state executive experience and Senator Al Gore was the Duke of Didactic Discursion, this enhanced Bill Clinton's qualities as an executive doer, a people person, and a uniter of factions using personality and intellect on a slightly higher level than his running mate seemed to be capable of. It also enhanced the idea that Clinton was smart if he could pick such a smart running mate, even if Gore could be off-putting. So the Gore to Clinton was a slightly weaker appearing leadership Two enhancing his One, while the actuality revealed itself later on as to whose judgment seemed better. Al Gore's later experiences go to show how judgment in matters of personal style cannot be ignored without political cost. You can be hated by some and come back to earn respect, but not if you are lampooned for continual stylistic reinvention.

What about Reagan-Bush? This was a more subtle match despite the loud protestations about Reagan being a mere actor, since his gubernatorial experience was a truer test of his KSAs. Reagan's charisma was not in doubt, and on this point George H.W. Bush was more as Gore was to Clinton. Yet Bush Sr. was also a decorated war veteran and aviator, a former CIA Director and establishmentarian whose experiences were unquestionably deep. He helped take the edge off of arguments that Reagan was not bright, or a mere communicator. Reagan's uncanny ability and reading of other people made him an excellent leader of people, so his excellence and principle in this regard carried George H.W. Bush to a successful election against Dukakis-Ferraro among other comparisons.

Highlighting the presidential nominee with a lesser known, less charismatic or less experienced running mate is good campaign strategy because the circle always leads back to a public trust in One. If the VP choice leads to a questioning of the judgment of One, One's past judgment becomes an issue. For an experienced One, that is a welcome emphasis.

What about Obama-Biden? Some comment on the Senatorial overdose, or the lawyer-boorishness of the combination has already began, while others point to seasoning that links a well-done Washington to a rare presidential candidate like Obama, fusing the past with the future.

What first comes to mind when I think of Joe Biden is that he has frequently been selected to respond to GOP administration speeches, addresses, and debates before major TV audiences because of his command of national security and justice issues. He has leadership experience in the debat-o-sphere for sure, and that has to include his Senate committee experiences and leadership. He has visibility and name recognition. And he has suffered personal loss, something that has been used to suggest that a person can identify with citizens who have also suffered personal losses. This last reality should not be underestimated any more than overdone. Certainly, as an across-the-aisle counterweight to the long-serving and experienced Mr. McCain, he offers multiple checks and balances. Who McCain chooses for his Two will be interesting in light of the Obama-Biden team.

Finally, there is after-election chemistry and harmony of working styles...Dick Cheney, a deep political experience man to George W. Bush's relative political inexperience is the sort of strong Two that people would fear if they could fortell what they would come to do. He was afterall, elected as a comforting backup for Bush Jr., being the sot of anti-Quayle VP. His equivalent in past times, as it turns out, might be Al Haig or Prince John. Tragic ambitions will be associated with overreaching or overambitious VPs.

Biden avoids the Dark Lord problem even though he has run for the Presidency in the past, because Biden has been rooted in the political branch of government where he has had the role of a human check on over-ambition or extremes in the White House or High Court. This itself helps with perceptions of his constitutional faithfulness and respect for him as a formidable adversary to conservatives. Finally, although the electorate might not appreciate a check-and-balance man for executive office, after this past eight years, that could "change."

Something that Biden does for McCain is perhaps reduce the ageist arguments against McCain by being a senior gentleman himself. McCain, being at various times an old warhorse and a consistent counter-balance against torture without appearing to burn flags with his words about the Iraq War will remain formidable. Attempts by a sharp-minded and tongued Biden to bring him down to size by waiting for gaffes such as that having to do with Middle East terror groups may be countered by Biden's past gaffes. And this is probably a good thing since oratical gaffes don't necessarily tell us much about the capacity, capability and strength of leadership in a person unless they reveal some aweful, arcane evil dwelling within.

It seems that we have a level playing field for a competitive race coming up, with the wild card factors being the Clinton Wing's reception of Biden over Hil, and the effect of the McCain VP choice on the Colorado Springs oriented political campaign organizing powers that be. These kinds of rifts and potential rifts are frequently healed for the sake of the party. Failure to do so on one side or the other may gain traction with the opposition as a sign that a candidate cannot unite the country. Yet without a degree of independence, if the factions lose respect for a candidate who tries too much to be loved, this might cause a lukewarm or lackluster turnout for the bland soup candidate, which is more deeply feared than a hot button love-hate response in the electorate.

Knock-knock...who's there?
Orange.
Orange who?
Orange you glad it isn't you?

(with apologies to our Denver Orange and Blue, the symbols of non-partisan independence, the Broncos.)

At home and abroad, the US seems to have ignored the Russian Federation under Vladimir Putin as it built an international network of influence to prepare for a new Cold War with the West. Signs of this have proliferated since Boris Yeltsin named Putin head of the FSB.

Why would the US ignore a Soviet-like Russian resurgence? Has the US been lulled into complacency by its economic and technological advantages over Russia? Is the War on Terror so absorbing that the US hasn't the resources to check Russia? Had the US dismissed Russia as a threat because of its 1990s chaos? Did the US fail to see the chaos as Russia's way of elevating its fittest survivor to the Kremlin? Or that KGB training, ruthlessness and discipline would win that contest over democracy, idealism, and Gorbachev's reforms?

It seems unlikely that the US defense and intelligence establishment, with all of its resources, could become that foolish. More likely, the US feared Russia as a catastrophic WMD depot for ancient enemies vying for the Cold War vacuum and leveraging Russia's economic blight. Recall Russia's mortality rate, plummeting birth rate, corruption, substance abuse issues, and post-nuclear pollution. In this light, the US wanted a Vladimir Putin as much as Russians came to desire one. A strong ruler could efficiently secure and control the nation's most dangerous resources. It's been said before: a strong Russia is safer than a weak one, and a Russia with something to lose is easier to work with.

Recent history supports this view. Two events that accelerated Putin's standing and international strategy were US-driven. The first was the bombing of Serbia in 1999, deeply felt in Russia as proof that the West sought political dominance, not freedom, in the East. Analysts had to know that this would stoke Russian nationalism. It was after this that Yeltsin named Putin his first Prime Minister and successor. The second was the decision to exclude Russia from Iraqi reconstruction contracts in 2003 at a time when Western energy companies actively sought heavy stake in Russian oil concerns such as Yukos. This was a sign to Russians that the West sought economic dominance with double standards over the East. Shortly after this, Russia prosecuted key energy oligarchs and nationalized its energy industry, a foundation of Russian state resurgence.

American analysts had to know what the likely Russian responses would be to these "provocations." Vladimir Putin and his cadre of messengers have used the word "provocations" repeatedly when referring to American actions such as the missile shield. And yet, where military conflict might have occurred with the Russian seizure of a Serbian airport in the tense days of NATO's bombing campaign of the Clinton years, or America's post-9-11 military mobilizations in Eurasia, none did. It seems as if old business understandings, not war, prevailed. The US FBI and Russian FSB have even cooperated on anti-terrorism, anti-crime and international human trafficking prosecution.

Whether a Nixonian cynicism has motivated the US to accept Georgian forces to support its own in Iraq and then deny Georgia US forces to repel the Russians in recent weeks, who knows? The US has blamed surprise and cited overextension of its forces to explain its lack of reciprocity to Georgians. It has done everything it could outside of military assistance to help Georgia. Yet this will not necessarily stop Russia from absorbing Georgia over time. Instead, indecisive Western aid, without military protection, could eventually find Russian warehouses.

Russia's invasion of Georgia is where the strategy of provoking and aiding the resurgence of a strong Russia is reaching the blowback stage. NATO has just seen Russia successfully disrupt NATO's growth. Alliances do not become more secure by stagnating or contracting while authoritarian partnerships grow. And much has been done to divide the members of NATO in recent years. This has been part of Putin's influence campaign, using what human intelligence resources he had to compensate for what he did not. Most observers have warned of Russia's return to authoritarianism and Cold War posturing, citing for example, the end of free media and the commandeering of regional governorships, two blows to Mikhail Gorbachev's lauded reforms.

And Mr. Gorbachev, scarily, seems to have bet against one of the horses he rode into the West's heart, glasnost. By 2006 Putin had whittled Russia's fledgling free press down to Novaya Gazeta, where the late Anna Politkovskaya worked until her 2006 murder. Months before Politkovskaya's KGB style execution at her apartment building, Gorbachev bought a key interest in Novaya Gazeta. At first decrying her murder as a blow to glasnost, Gorbachev later switched horses and echoed the Putin government's talking points on Politkovskaya's murder: that someone intent on discrediting the Putin government must have shot her. It was a chilling shift by Gorbachev considering that so many Western dignitaries appear to have openly trusted Gorbachev and supported his foundation.

A candid look at the recent history of the US and Russia together suggests that democracy, liberty and other Western ideals may have been auctioned off for stability. We see ideals like reciprocal support to Georgia's democracy and unequivocal solidarity with the champions of glasnost drowning in icy waters. Now we are seeing the pendulum swing beyond stability to Russia towards hyper-centralized power. That kind of power corrupts and anarchy is its secondary infection. Then anarchy leads to despotism. It is a cycle of extremes for which bona fide checks and balances in a constitutional system with a bill of rights is the best cure. The Putin strategy has been to use spiritual and cultural heritage to vilify constitutional democracy as a corruption of the West while celebrating Soviet history as if it were part of the Russian tradition and not rooted in a utopian Western ideology itself.

Yes I can name a nation state in which the disrespect for life has led to the erosion of civil freedoms less fundamental than life.

Russia:

http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB5054/index1.html

For many years, legal abortion was the mainstay for birth control in the USSR then RF. A quote from the brief:

"Contributing to the low fertility in Russia has been an abortion rate that is among the highest in the world. For decades, abortion was the main method in Russia for limiting births. In recent years, as the availability of effective contraceptives has increased, the number of abortions has declined.1"

Birth control was used to decrease per capita outlays by the employment state ... to relieve pressure on resources and prove itself progressive. Because the atheist state taught that human beings don't have souls, materialism (in the form of economic deterministic theory) justified the policy. For the Soviets, human lives were merely material units, the numbers of which could be manipulated to serve the material ends of the state.

What stops me from assisting Sen. Obama beyond supporting his bid against Sen. Clinton is that there is no sign that he has recognized the depth of disrespect for life which connects mercenary wars with mercenary abortion. They are connected. When the easy taking of life for nuanced and un-supportable economic reasons becomes commonplace policy, the nation state incrementally dismantles rights that are less dramatic until there is no substantive bill of rights left. Life is certainly the basic right on which all others rest.

Sen. McCain does not seem to recognize this either, or care.

You can't ignore such a disease and expect to recover from it.

(Welcome. Apologies for the tickler title (0;)

For Vladimir Putin, Georgia's independence after the USSR's dissolution boiled into a scalding personal affront. Like Ukraine, Estonia and Chechnya, Georgia's independence insulted him personally because Putin's power over Russia had become so centralized in his person and personality.

The difference is that now, Russian personality cultism has learned how to make Sovietism chic and fashionable -- even Western. For example, Putin has managed to make being an Orthodox Christian a fashionable glue for Russian nationalism even while waging fratricidal warfare against Orthodox Christian Georgia following a protracted passport giveaway program to pry South Ossetians away from Georgia.

Racially, many from the Ossetias who would otherwise be harrassed and treated like second class citizens in Moscow were suddenly important to it. Some may remember the furor over a poor government response to the Beslan massacre in North Ossetia as proof of indifference to the peoples of the Caucasus.

Among history's Russian leaders, Vladimir Putin's personal power over Russia is rivalled only by Stalin. He, like Stalin, has become Sovietism (centrality) incarnate. At some point Putin realized that nationalism could replace Soviet ideologic brainwashing as the agent of popular control. And he could retain some of the old Soviet brainwashing by calling it part of national heritage. It was an elegant synthesis, almost amusingly dialectic, as sucker-idealists would rationalize as inevitable. No, nothing was inevitable. It had to be taken with force.

Not unlike what militant Islamists had done with spiritual Jihad, Putin had taken a spiritual teaching of Orthodox Christianity, that the kingdom of God is taken by force (meaning ascetic forcing of one's undisciplined, selfish and fractious soul to be of service to God and those in his image, mankind). In this Vladimir Putin has borrowed the fantasy of others before him that taking the kingdoms of Earth is certainly permitted if the kingdom of Heaven is already offered.

Yet this is not what ancient Orthodox Christianity actually teaches as its non-negotiable Truth, or dogma (not a bad term in its original meaning). The Church echoes the Lord telling Peter to lay aside his sword with his earthly cares and follow Christ. At most, the state is merely an incidental tool that ultimately will serve God's purposes on earth whether it wants to or not. That doesn't necessarily mean that it will serve willingly or with God's favor. It may even fight God. As for instance by attacking with the sword innocent peoples and even brothers in the faith such as most Georgians happen to be.

For Putin, the earthly concerns trump the others. The world would see whose national pride was greater: Russia's or its enemies who had unravelled its earthly empire at the edges. Pierced through his heart by a dagger of KGB loyalties, the dagger took on a life of its own in the chaotic 1990s, re-emerging incarnate within St. Petersburg politics. One had to become close to his enemies to seize the right openings and opportunities to throw him with his own errors.

First came Lubyanka and then the Kremlin. Like a sinister and guileful Chauncey Gardner (the good and kind one played by Peter Sellers in Being There) Vladimir Putin watched his St. Petersburg employer's influence wane until through him, he became servant to Russia's sick national leader. All he had to do was remain a staunch, silent support for him, and keep a disciplined watch all around him. Perhaps he pitied him as a sign of what Russia had become at the hands of its enemies. Yet as I've argued here before, this remains a failure for the Russian leader to accept responsibility for the USSR's unravelling and Russia's chaos squarely on the USSR's totalitarian games.

However, when NATO bombed Serbia, it blew contemplative state troubleshooting out the window and redirected the dagger against Russia's scapegoat enemies. The sick leader, Boris Yeltsin, was enraged. He seemed betrayed and out of control. He had to do something, whether he realized it himself or it was quietly required of him for his life. He knew just the man for the job. Vladimir Putin. The son of Stalin's cook. He'd named the impressively disciplined man as head of the FSB. When the fervor against the West burned again, he named him First Prime Minister and successor in a flood of executive cognitive dissonance.

This Comrade Putin: he could no doubt cook up a response to remember. And viola, the anti-Chauncey stepped up. Reportedly, his now famous response to Yeltsin on his high official nod was "We are military men. The decision's been made and we will carry it out."

Looking at Georgia I say "And how."

The common mindset of US officials who presume American empire is acceptable and citizens who presume that abortion of other living beings is their right, is imperial exceptionalism. In both cases the death of others for our continued comfort, whatever the kind of comfort, is justified as "our due."

If the CRD's (constitutional democratic republic) citizens feel this way about their "right" to destroy the defenseless and dependent to insure their access to society's highest rewards, how much more may its officials justify imperial domination of relatively defenseless and weak nation states to insure access to energy's greatest rewards?

This is a domestic and foreign problem I'll call ED for lack of a better term. It's Empire Dysfunction, in which an imperial mindset of exceptionalism and unquestionability has set in and hardened the arteries and ear drums of the ethical mind.

ED is exactly that which causes the CRD to become flaccid and the once independent, responsible and spirited people that worked for a CRD to become one wobbling mass of fearful, manipulable rubber-stampers of all powers that do wrong yet leave them free to consume. This is ED at its worst. And it is systemic, so Mr. Obama may just as easily find his political genetics virally coopted by it as Mr. McCain, Ms. Clinton or anyone else who depended on its Proponents to get into office.

And among the Proponents, those whose bottom line is not human life, but dollars, can fairly be assumed to have a motive to leave ED in place. For those whose greatest interests are backed into a perceived corner and who can't humble themselves, the justified killing of others isn't far behind. It's their "due." And using other people's money (taxpayers) and other peoples' lives (children) to kill and be killed is the SOP of these business interests.

Why is it their "due"? Well, haven't their appointed justices over the past several decades left abortion intact? The tacitly agreed recipe: falsely justified right to kill in exchange for the falsely justified right to kill, add lots of useless words of indignation as propaganda, and pretend to lose as a pretext for getting elected tomorrow so that one can "win" and finally "end those imperial wars," or "make abortion obsolete."

Hopefully Mr. Obama, promising to reach common ground and common sense solutions to formerly intractible problems among us, and with other nation states, will work with his team to make both forms imperial domination of the weak and defenseless an obsolete and unnecessary evil.

Isn't it long past time that our wars be only those necessary to defend our lives from foreign and domestic aggression, and abortions to save the lives of moms?

If the story had been how a disproportionate number of transgendered people were landing in New York's juvenile detention centers because they are transgendered; or that they were the only ones facing violent incidents, the AP piece I read today might have passed as journalism.

The AP's was a PR piece for GLBT advocacy groups which believe that transgendered young people are exercising free expression. We all have a right to free expression, however, we do not have a right to demand that the taxpayers pay for an infrastructure that favors our expression versus others'. Is that why NY Governor Paterson's comments contain a the phrase "gender expression issues"? To raise a sort of ADA aura about the policy?

Violent incidents happen in juvenile detention centers all the time, and to all kinds and categories of young detainees, yet the transgendered get special protection. This raises a question as to their capacity for adjudication in the first place, and makes me wonder of medical facilities might be a better fit.

Instead of equal protection, the State of NY gives transgendered people their own cells and private showers. It is done in the name of protecting the right to gender expression issues. However, it is really an expensive and unnecessary type of segregation, isn't it?

If "expression issues" warrant special perks in juvenile detention, then must they also be provided in jails and prisons? And if so, then what other individual "expression issues" will the taxpayers ultimately be expected to accomodate with individualized cells and extra guards and so on? This begs the question of why they have been institutionalized in the first place. How many crimes or delinquencies are related to their imposition of their "expression issues" on others?

Re: the warping of the laws and public obligations, this is on the level with California's Orwellian ban on student vocabulary that "might offend" alleged GLBT students in public schools. When an ideology so narrowly interested warps the First Amendment, it has been allowed to go too far. When it requires taxpayers to fund an unlimited criterion for subjectively determined special needs, such as "expression" issues, where does that end?

What's next, a third set of barracks for such folks in the Armed Forces? Majority norms, fairly applied and enforced are usually sufficient to protect everyone. It's when they go unenforced or disparately enforced that useless laws and policies are passed. It seems to be another species of the "hate crime" juris-imprudence suggesting that new laws ought to be passed to remedy existing laws' ill-enforcement.

I do not believe people with gender expression issues should be treated badly. But neither should anyone else. Given the nuances of human behavior in the public square, I suspect there is something much more complex at work here than a stereotypical society going out of its way to oppress people with "gender issues." Rights and responsibilities apply to all.

The ABC news clip online centered a grave looking, plastic surgery hackneyed pretty boy with every hair in place claiming that FLDS puts its boys to work in the fields to help provide for the community when they become teens. They portrayed an FLDS website describing the children's daily routines as "propaganda."

It occurred to me that those 13 year old boys were probably tougher and heartier than the pampered, powdered anchor.
 
The story called the boys' work "child labor," and as I watched the clip I thought to myself, that's what my dad did to help his family when he was a boy. He worked for the family business delivering ice blocks early in the morning, to ranches and farms. Who is pedaling the propaganda?

Then I wondered: are these boys' peers better off in the larger culture who are not working?

China's tough enough to take a world of people who put on the brakes with them until they finally break from the old communist ideals, the totalitarian re-education routine for people who disagree, and oppressing religion. These ought to be business checkers until real change is overtly announced and action takes place. Otherwise, slowing China's economy and becoming more self-sufficient in manufacturing in the West will not kill anyone.

Too many western powers and businesses are falling for the sale before they finish due diligence. In this, they give away power. With fuel prices up, perhaps we can start with domestic steel production for the rebuilding of the US infrastructure. It ought to be cheaper to make and move domestically than send across the ocean. That is, unless state industries in China throw state dollars at the problem to destroy competition.

You want to bring the country together? Then end abortion through other than legal means if you have such a moral belief in "choice" but not necessarily in abortion [It is clearly a second choice that undoes responsibility for a first choice in elective cases].

You say that you wouldn't choose an abortion yourself, but will fight for someone else's right to choose it? Leave that self-justifying cocoon and do something to end what the great majority agrees is an evil, whether they think it should be legal or not.

And at the same time, take the issue away from the Republicans and actually fix the problems leading to it as well as end the practice by taking the lead. Those who are fighting for partial birth abortion are not unlike those supporting the policies of the Third Reich. They think they're right but they're dead wrong and complicit in mass murder with too much pride to look at the reality of what is really happening. What their rationalization skills do to fog their consciences today will be seen by history as atrocity. The cover up, clinical sanitization and silence on partial birth abortion is itself a propaganda mindset that condones mass murder.

Partial birth abortion is clearly a murder. Baby is right there, alive, coming into the world and is murdered with a pair of scissors stuck into his/her head. The physician doesn't pull the head out because she/he would have to look at what they were doing to a live, innocent human being. They'd have to look at the baby's human face grimacing at being pithed by a savage, evil act. Calling the baby a fetus in this circumstance is like calling a slave a sub-human to justify the murder of a slave. Clinical language used to mask what is happening is merely a labeling game that has been used by criminals running from their consciences for a very long time.

You may oppose these truths by suggesting that the consequences of declaring these children what they are, living human beings, is to criminalize doctors. Well, not if the law isn't retroactive.

People are free to smoke, but government has done much to restrict, discourage and fight against it. It is a moral issue: thou shalt not kill (yourself) by smoking; thou shalt not steal from others' health care dollars by smoking; thou shalt not harm others' lungs with passive smoke; thou shalt not engage in the idolatry of worshipping nicotine. In the same way, we've had legal abortion, but restricting it is considered unacceptable legislation of morality when it is done with gusto regarding life destroying cigarettes.

Like a nicotine addict defending his or her right to smoke, so much worse are those who defend their right to order a doctor to stick a pair of scissors into the unborn head of a child and get away with it.

If the Dems won't do anything about it, then the US will become worse and worse as a human rights violator in every sphere of government and private conduct. The GOP wants abortion, that's why they haven't outlawed it for the past 24/28 years they've had the White House, a stint when they had the Congress and after they'd packed the Supreme Court.

When those with power over the helpless or the weak use their power to destroy children coming out of the womb, we are courting evil empire status. Once that happens, the end of that empire is near. It is moral dissolution that unravels the rotting fish.

We can still get out of it. The Dems must provide real change.

That's it. I just write titles anymore. I think that's all people read anymore, either.