Amazing, the loose coalition formally known as the Republican Party is slowing corroding and falling into disrepair.  Formed of social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, and security conservatives the party previously owned and controlled by the social conservatives has been hijacked by the so called neo-conservatives.

The religious fringe of the Republican Party started out being tolerated by the rest of the party, then courted by them and now it seems they are demanding the affections of a party that has simply lost interest in them.

Dick Cheney, in 1994, made it clear that he was completely against going into Iraq for exactly all the reasons we are now stuck in the middle of the worst mistake this country has ever made.

The Republicans thought they knew Dick, but as it turns out … not so much.

Florida?  They seriously want to piss off Floridians?  The DNC has said that Florida can have no delegates to the 2008 Democratic convention unless the duly elected legislature of the state of Florida moves it Primary to February 5.

Let’s think about this for a moment.  Exactly why would the Republican controlled legislature in Tallahassee want to do anything to appease the DNC?  After all, who will the voters blame if they get no representation at the Convention – the Democrats or the State House? 

Then, come November, Florida’s electorate (still annoyed at the Democrats for shunning them) will head to the polls to vote for President.  Why exactly should they vote for anyone with a (D) after their name if the (D) party doesn’t want their participation at the convention?

The DNC is actually trying to lose the White House in ‘08 by irritating the State that they lost by only 500 votes in 2000, and that is just plain dumb.

The DNC needs to suck it up and re-vote to allow Florida and any other state to hold their election whenever the people of that state want to hold their election.  If that calendar doesn’t fit into the schedule of New Hampshire, Iowa or the DNC then too bad!  But, Florida’s voters will not forgive the DNC if the Democratic Party is stupid enough to allow themselves to be manipulated by the Republican controlled Florida State House.

Former Speaker Hastert will be the first of many members of Congress with an R after their names to step down and leave the governing to others.  Why?  Because it’s simply not as much fun to be in the minority as it is to be in the Majority.

Republican’s treated the Democrats like dirt for twelve long evil years while they were in the Majority, and now they whine and complain that the Democrats are treating them about 50% as badly.

Look for many more Republicans to simply not run for reelection.  This “minority effect” will sweep an even larger Democratic majority into the House and Senate in 2008.

The Democratic candidates who are refusing to participate in the Fox News Debate are wrong.  As well, the Republicans refusing to participate in the YouTube.com debate are also wrong.  Since when should a candidate refuse to answer questions from voters?

OK, so the first YouTube/CNN debate was sometimes on the silly side and maybe snowmen should be disqualified from asking questions in the future.  However, at least one debate should have all the questions come from real people and not from the talking heads from Cable or Broadcast TV.

If Mitt Romney can’t handle a snowman asking him questions, how does he propose to handle Osama Bin Landen?

Shame on the Republican candidates for thinking they are too good to have a voter ask a question directly.  Format be dammed, a voter’s question is a voter’s question and deserves an answer.

Weren’t the Republicans the ones who wanted a government that taxed its people fairly, and weren’t the Democrats the one in favor of gay rights – what happened to that?

Gay couples are expected to pay the exact same income and property taxes that everyone else pays.  However, there is no box on the tax form that says, ” Check here for a 20% discount if you can’t use all the services provided by your government”.

Gay couples still pay school taxes in states where they are not allowed to adopt children.  Gay Couples still pay social security taxes to a system that allows non-working married couples to extend benefits to their spouses while gay couples pay exactly (if not more) and are denied that benefit.

Gay couples pay state taxes to support a civil court system that would protect a relatives right to sue for wrongful death or injury of a spouse.  Gay couples still get to pay state taxes, but are in most cases denied access to the courthouse.

What do you want to bet that the Republican candidates all made just a little bit of pee in their pants when they heard that ‘Lil George was going to be paying a visit to South Carolina to shore up support among Republicans?  With friends like George supporting your party who needs Democrats to trash talk it?  This is the same Bush that went around the country selling the same message just before the midterm elections and voters didn’t buy then either.

Every time Bush opens his mouth about Iraq, 70% of Americans scream at their TVs, “What part of YOU WERE WRONG does The President not get”?  He was wrong about WMD, he was wrong not to send enough troops to secure Iraq after the fall of Baghdad, he was wrong to disband the Iraqi army weapons in toe, he was wrong to order the army to drive right by munitions caches on their way to Baghdad, and right now - this very minute - George W. Bush is wrong when he says staying in Iraq will keep America safer.

Staying in Iraq is making America more exposed.  Our military is stretched to the breaking point, the troops are not rested and the President is oblivious to all of this.  With our troops out of Iraq we could concentrate on a three-point plan to make America in fact safer:

1. Implement real counter terrorism measures here at home.
2. Move more forces into Afghanistan and Pakistan and take off the head of al Qaeda – the real al Qaeda, not the one in Mesopotamia.
3. Bring our National Guard home with the equipment needed to help Americans in disasters and to help secure our southern boarder.

Instead, our troops are stuck in Donald Rumsfeld’s “long hard slog” going nowhere and accomplishing nothing.  Well, they are acting as great recruiting agents for al Qaeda, Hezbolah and Hamas.  Leaving Iraq to the Iraqis to sort out would make for a better Iraq and a safer America.

Leaving George W. Bush at home and out of South Carolina would make for easier campaigning for Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and John McCain.

Has the President substituted one addiction for another?  Addicts frequently substitute sex, shopping, gambling or food when their drug of choice is denied them.  Has George Bush just changed his drug of choice to waging war?  He openly admits to abusing drugs and alcohol in his younger years.  Even if he didn’t the videos of him drunk combined with his DUI arrest would be enough to convince almost anyone he has an addictive personality.

Now, this post is not about unfounded gossip that Bush is drinking or using drugs; in fact there is no way to know that.  However, you can’t turn a pickle back into a cucumber and the President’s personality isn’t going to transform just because he has the will power to abstain from drugs and alcohol.

Twelve Step programs use the following 20 questions to “test” whether someone is an addict or alcoholic.  Depending on which Twelve Step program is giving the quiz, the questions will substitute the word “alcohol” for “cocaine” or “gambling”, etc.  The idea is the questions are universally able to tell if someone is addicted to an act or substance.  The following 20 questions are taken from Gamblers Anonymous’ website with the words “gambling” and “gamble” substituted with “waging war” and “wage war”.   According to Gamblers Anonymous http://www.gamblersanonymous.org/ answering yes to seven questions is an indication of a problem.

1. Did you ever lose time from work or school due to waging war?
2. Has waging war ever made your home life unhappy?
3. Did waging war affect your reputation?
4. Have you ever felt remorse after waging war?
5. Did you ever wage war to get money with which to pay debts or otherwise solve financial difficulties?
6. Did waging war cause a decrease in your ambition or efficiency?
7. After losing did you feel you must return as soon as possible and win back your losses?
8. After a win did you have a strong urge to return and win more?
9. Did you often wage war until your last dollar was gone?
10. Did you ever borrow to finance your waging war?
11. Have you ever sold anything to finance waging war?
12. Were you reluctant to use “waging war money” for normal expenditures?
13. Did waging war make you careless of the welfare of yourself or your family?
14. Did you ever wage war longer than you had planned?
15. Have you ever wage war to escape worry or trouble?
16. Have you ever committed, or considered committing, an illegal act to finance waging war?
17. Did waging war cause you to have difficulty in sleeping?
18. Do arguments, disappointments or frustrations create within you an urge to wage war?
19. Did you ever have an urge to celebrate any good fortune by a few hours of waging war?
20. Have you ever considered self destruction or suicide as a result of your waging war?
Now, some of those questions only Mr. Bush himself can answer; but clearly he scores a positive hit on at least 10 and most likely more of the questions.

When any addict’s behavior becomes out of control it is time for an intervention.  Normally a family member or the courts intervene and force the addict into treatment.  However, only the Congress has the authority to get involved in this case.  No other person and no other legal body has the authority to force the President to stop this addictive behavior.  It is time for the House of Representatives to do something, anything to make the addict in the White House stop.

George W. Bush’s addictive personality is responsible for his unwillingness to leave Iraq. He is convinced that victory is just around the corner. He believes that the next military raid will produce great results.  He sees great logic in that taking $400,000,000,000.00 and sending it to that sink hole known as Iraq to be followed by even more billions.  His behaves as a child told he couldn’t have his ice cream when the congress attempts to put even reasonable restrictions on his ability to wage war.

If George Bush is the addict, then the Republican Party is his enabler.  Having control of the congress for the first six years of his Presidency, the Republican leadership did nothing to temper Bush’s addictive conduct and now time is running short; and only the threat of impeachment or a trial on the house floor will get the Addict in Chief’s attention.

Have you seen it yet?  Its worth a watch because the Hott(sic) for Hill video is both fun and funny; but, it is difficult to say which is more entertaining the video or the conservative talk show hosts having an aneurysm over thinking a 22 year old lesbian from California is in love with Hillary!

It should come as no surprise the CMO (Conservative Media Outlets) are making a big deal out of this story.  It fits right into their agenda – keep the public scared and outraged.  This, of course, fits into the outraged category and the fact that the video is just a parody, well never mind that – just focus on the moral decay aspect of the story, right?

For the record, the woman in the video isn’t a lesbian, she a thespian making a parody of a parody.  Not an easy thing to do, but Taryn Southern did it well and hats off to her.   She’s a Hollywood actress that is looking for publicity not a lesbian trolling for Hillary booty; notice in the video when she hopes Hillary is “Bi” that the screen text says, “Bilingual”?

The CMO knows that the video is a parody, but chooses make-believe outrage over the truth. That politics is full of hypocrites should come as no surprise.  After all, this week’s activities were astounding with Mrs. Vitter saying she’s never been more proud and the Senate voting down a bill that would have supported our troops by guaranteeing troop “down” time.

Desperate to turn attention away from Republican failed policy in Iraq, the appalling lack of support for our troops, the CMO pulled out the last arrow in their quiver placed a poison called a lie on that arrow shot it at Hollywood.   Admittedly Hollywood is an easy target for so many reasons; but, why is it that the CMO hates Hollywood and California until it comes to Ronald Regan and Fred Thompson?

To the CMO: lighten up!  It was just a fun video making fun of the Obama video. Would that more people in our society were as clever, fun and entertaining as Ms Southern.  More importantly, wouldn’t it be nice if we could all take ourselves just a little less seriously and laugh?

Of course the Internet has always had a strange etiquette all to itself and every once in a while everyone steps on someone’s Internet toes.  However, Joe Biden has really gone over the line with his intrusion into the Youtube.com debate process.

Rather than just encouraging his followers to submit questions for the debate and maybe even suggesting a topic for his supporters, Senator Biden actually posted the exact verbiage on his campaign website he’d like you to ask.  Yes you got it, word for word exactly what he wants you to look into a camera, say, and then upload to You Tube.

Now there are a couple of reasons Mr. Biden might be asking people to do this for him.  It is possible that he doesn’t know how to upload videos to YouTube and wants someone to ask his question for him or perhaps Joe is simply to shy to ask his own question. 

But, the real reason is that Joe Biden is disrespecting the entire process by attempting to jam his question up user’s (humm can’t say that … ok, got it) tube!  Biden is stepping all over the You Tube community by attempting to get just one question submitted by so many users that You Tube has no choice but to show the video during the debate.

But, why?  If Joe Biden wants to answer that question, why not just reword some other question that gets asked the way he’s done at all the other debates?  Could it be that Joe is afraid of offending You Tube users by restating their questions instead of answering them directly?  Well, too late Joe, you’ve already offended You Tube users by violating the integrity of the community’s process. 

Senator Biden, are you that afraid of the questions voters will ask that you can’t just let the process happen organically?  Can your question really be so important that it should jump the line and bump out real voter’s questions?

You can call Joe Biden’s campaign at 302-428-5427 and let them know what you think of Joe attempting to fake the You Tube process or you can email You Tube at abuse@youtube.com

Yes, absolutely, the debate format with 10 candidates is frustrating and tedious.  If they are that arduous and painful for viewers, it is difficult to imagine how the candidates get through them.

But, democracy is built on a foundation of ideas, and ideas are grown in the sunshine of open and honest exchange.  Without open debates early on in the process, the candidates get shielded from ideas – the very dreams of others.  Admittedly, sometimes these are ideas that the candidates don’t want to hear and sometimes even ideas that sound a bit odd.  But the first amendment doesn’t say we have the right to free and non-crazy sounding speech.

So, Hillary, Barrack and John, Please do not exclude anyone from the debates who has even a bare claim to legitimacy as a candidate for President.  Who knows, an idea might be brought forth, on which one of you might win.

After just having gone through an administration that has attempted to quash free speech at every opportunity, would it really be so bad to throw Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel a bone?  Just a tiny bone?