As happens with every good thing, this blog has run its course. We had a great run, the lot of us. Left, right...in between? We tried to bring you insight from every angle in a format that allowed expression of opinion, interplay between reader and writer and a bit of humor. I think we largely succeeded.

We all appreciated those who read our words regardless if you agreed or not. I for one drew immensely differing opinions. The written word, whether written by me or the exquisite Peggy Noonan is an absolute expression of the one who wrote such words, just as the comments were.

I find it refreshing that this medium has as much of an impact as it does. I'm not sure if blogs and public opinion are changing the world, yet one would hope that we have some small effect, whether it be a change in a Senate vote or a change in one single opinion. Politics have changed because we--and I mean you the reader as well as me the commentator--have paid attention and every single news story is a chance for us to comment and call those we elect on the carpet.

I've been writing online for nearly five years and I've posted things that were erroneous. At the very second I was proven wrong, I posted a retraction and let my story stand because that is the way of the citizen journalist. I wish that the pros would do the same. Perhaps with our persuasion they will.

Anyway, thank you for your loyalty and thank you to all the great writers assembled here. Thank you to Kathleen, David and Chris for holding this thing together and turning out a great product. Honestly, being highly skewed to the GOP end, I thought I would be highly edited. No way, my opinions were exactly like I wrote them and I believe every other writer enjoyed that same freedom. That's what made this blog roll along day in and day out.

Mostly though, I wish to thank our readers without whom we would have stopped in December. You were hard-core and read us, commented to us and picked off every single written mistake we've made. That's how it should be. I enjoyed the debate and hope to keep it going elsewhere. We are at a major crossroads in our great nation and debate is exactly what is needed. Personally, I got down and dirty with Manny, Veg and others and enjoyed the perspective you brought even though I couldn't agree any less. Thanks to all the guys and girls out there who took the time to tell me I'm an idiot--until now it was only my beautiful wife who thought that was the case. Please visit my other blog and continue the debate.

Finally, let me say that AOL tried something a bit bold here--a group blog with numerous opinions and numerous takes on daily events. That had not really been done previously and I applaud them for taking the risk and assembling an eclectic mix of bloggers. I was once asked via a commenter why the right-wing was so well represented. That's easy, we're Republicans and any chance of making money was not to be ignored so we wrote every day so we didn't miss out on the paycheck.

Thank you all and I will truly miss you all. Almost a year of my life was spent doing this and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Respectfully.

Scott

John Edwards got himself in some hot water yesterday, although I'd be shocked if you read it in tomorrow's paper:

"We cannot build enough prisons to solve this problem. And the idea that we can keep incarcerating and keep incarcerating - pretty soon we're not going to have a young African-American male population in America. They're all going to be in prison or dead. One of the two."

Now imagine if Fred Thompson or Mitt Romney had said something akin to that.

NRO makes it clear that the African-American community is not all Bloods/Crips, Kanye West/50-Cent and Glock/Mac-10 but is a community that is sending their children to college and making great inroads. Of course we have inner city violence and that is more of a cultural issue hat must be addressed but Edwards made a huge mistake here, even more than the mistake the prominent GOP candidates made by not attending the debate last night.

Edwards sounds a bit Dixiecratish. For those who think the GOP is the party of racists, do yourself a favor and read of current Senator Robert Byrd's KKK Kleagle days or the fact that Al Gore's father was anti-civil rights. Educate yourself on where the parties history on racism lies.

Every so often, a Democrat actually proposes a bill that shows exactly how they would act if they were given a clear majority in both houses and the presidency. Rep. John Dingell is doing that now:

Dealing with global warming will be painful, says one of the most powerful Democrats in Congress. To back up his claim he is proposing a recipe many people won't like - a 50-cent gasoline tax, a carbon tax and scaling back tax breaks for some home owners.

"I'm trying to have everybody understand that this is going to cost and that it's going to have a measure of pain that you're not going to like," Rep. John Dingell, who is marking his 52nd year in Congress, said Wednesday in an interview with The Associated Press.

First off, 52 years in Congress? If that isn't a reason to propose term limits, what is?

Dingell wants gas constantly over $3-4 per gallon and he'll use the money to fight "global warming," a crisis that scientists can't even agree on, right? Well, not exactly:

Some of the revenue would be used to reduce payroll taxes, but most would go elsewhere including for highway construction, mass transit, paying for Social Security and health programs and to help the poor pay energy bills.

If that is not a Democratic plan, nothing is. The esteemed Representative wants to raise taxes under the guise of fighting global warming and will instead use the money to pay for social programs created by Democrats that have grown to large for the government to support. This show exquisitely that every single program the Dems enact needs a huge tax burden to support: Welfare, Social Security, Medicare, etc. The list goes on. The fact is, this is all a drop in the bucket if socialized medicine ever passes.

With the last three days of the Major League Baseball season upon us, I've thought of how a baseball season is akin to a political race. Being it's a Friday and everything should be lighter on a Friday, let's look at this more closely.

A campaign, like the 162-game major league season is a marathon, not a sprint, a bad day in a campaign can be overcome the next day or week by a good showing and a mistake today could back and haunt a candidate in the crucial final weeks. Some candidates go out to an early lead and cruise winning two out of three games every series while some teams lead for the entire race and all of a sudden find themselves tied with one series left and momentum going against them.

He'll be the savior of the conservative movement, I tell ya.

Please Newt, don't do it. Sure, you may get the Conservative Christian vote, but that's not even the majority of the GOP vote and you'll get exactly zero of the Independent and Democrat vote unless some little old ladies have trouble with their butterfly ballots again. Keep you day job as commentator on various news shows as your time has passed and to be honest, you're not all that appealing. Here's the scoop:

Matt Towery, a former senior aide to Newt Gingrich, had dinner with the former House Speaker and notes "it is clear that the presidency is now very much" on his mind "and that he remains convinced that none of the candidates in the current field has captured the imagination of the party."

And Newt will? This is an excuse for Newt, he sees a traffic jam and he's going to ride in and steal votes from Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson. All that will happen is he'll take some of the social conservative vote from Rudy, some of the Southern vote from Fred and plod along in the 8-11% range where Romney's currently residing and get crushed in the primaries.

You know what Newt? On second thought, run and take some of the heat off the candidates that really matter. It will be like a two-week vacation for Giuliani and Thompson so throw your hat in.

Joe Biden, former plagiarist and Senator from the not-so-great, yet first state of Delaware has succeeded in accomplishing nothing and is elated about doing so:

In a strong rebuff to the Bush Administration on Iraq, the Senate overwhelming approved a plan by Biden that essentially calls for breaking Iraq into three sections: Kurd, Sunni, and Shia. While the amendment is nonbinding, it's the first measure to pass, (vote was 75-23,) that goes against the administration's war strategy.

Biden's chief co-sponsor was Brownback. Fellow candidates Clinton and Dodd also supported the plan. Obama and McCain did not vote. (bolding in original)

Wow, I'll be beating a path to the Biden for President headquarters in the morning. I'm entirely sure that President Bush felt "rebuffed" by this huge victory that is er, nonbinding. It's good to know that fellow candidates Hillary, Chris Dodd and Sam Brownback aided in passing this momentous bill that actually means nothing. It's a microcosm of the new Democratic Senate, is it not? Ineffectual, meaningless and proud of it as is made entirely too evident by this statement:

Republican Senator John Warner, instrumental and influential in almost all things related to Iraq, called the vote an "extraordinary moment because it marks the high-water mark of all the many debates and resolutions we've had in terms of bipartisanship."

The high-water mark? Bipartisanship? Jeez, the "influential" Senator is crowing about a nonbinding resolution that will have no effect on anything.

I have less faith in both sides of the Senate than I did just five minutes ago. Please tell me this is satire on MSNBC. Please tell me that correspondent Domenico Montanaro is really John Stewart and this whole thing is make believe.

Sadly, I fear it's not and with the day MSNBC has been having, this is probably the highlight of Dan Abrams day.

France has been making some serious noise about military action against Iran to prevent their developing, possessing and using a nuclear warhead. The rhetoric almost makes the French sound manly but until they actually fight I'll withhold judgment. They've backed off the talk recently but still sound as if they have at least half estrogen and half testosterone coursing through their foie gras clogged arteries, which is a huge improvement from when Chirac was at the helm.

Anyway, back when the US invaded Iraq, the liberals and assorted other inane folks on the left screamed that we were acting "unilaterally" even though we had numerous nations allied with us including, but not limited to: Spain, Britain, Australia, Poland, Honduras, Nicaragua, Ukraine and Japan. The hand-wringers always said that France wasn't involved so it wasn't really a coalition and didn't give damn that they were disparaging those who actually were allied with us in liberating Mesopotamia.

Well now that the French seem to have morphed into a testosterone-fueled beast ready to take on the mad Mullahs, will those who called our coalition a sham support an invasion? Even though it's been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Chirac was protecting cronies who were working in concert with Saddam to enrich themselves and didn't want the Oil for Food spigot turned off, they still screamed that idiotic unilateral screed. Will those wretched folks now support an invasion of Iran because the French do? I guess we'll soon see.

Iran is a major problem, they are fighting us in a proxy war in Iraq as is Syria. Should they get nukes, the Straits of Hormuz will be a constant battleground and we'll have to invade to keep it open as a huge amount of oil flows through that thin body of water. The fact that the French are rattling, well maybe not sabers but silverware is a testament to just how important this issue is.

If you take some time to poke around the web, the consensus opinion among professional pundits and amateur wannabes like myself is that the Republicans don't really stand a chance in 2008. They talk of veto-proof majorities and Congressional landslides as if they are a given.

I say not so fast and hear me out on this before you break out your crayons and write that I'm wrong.

On the Dem side, Hillary is far and away the frontrunner with no one within a stones throw. Obama made some noise as did Edwards (Elizabeth, not John) but it added up to squat. It was Hillary's race from the beginning and anyone who even dreamed it wasn't was deluding themselves. She has the money, the advisors and Bill, 'nough said.

On the GOP side, you have a wide-open race. I say Giuliani is currently the frontrunner but Fred Thompson is giving him agita and McCain and Romney could surprise once the primaries begin. In other words, the Republicans have no clear cut leader.

Hillary will be anointed in February leaving her wide open to attacks from all corners. I suspect that Obama and Edwards will still be in the race but will be extremely desperate and have no choice but to hit Hillary hard from the left while at the same time the GOP will open up from the right. It will be non-stop Hillary bashing for months. Her actions at that time are critical and I wouldn't be surprised if the Hsu story continues to break hitting its crescendo right around early spring making her a huge target. The Dems are hip to this and some leaked info spells it out in detail:

The private memo, leaked to The Washington Post, painted what researchers described as a "sobering picture" for Democrats who believe that President George W Bush's disastrous favourability numbers almost guarantee they will capture the White House next year.

All party preference polls show that Democrats are much more popular than Republicans. But when the names of individual candidates are used, the gap narrows considerably.

...The leaked poll found that Mr Giuliani, a centrist Republican with liberal stances on issues such as abortion and gay rights, leads Mrs Clinton by 49 per cent to 39 per cent in the swing districts.

By the time the GOP race is decided, she will be battered and the GOP candidate will have survived a bruising race leaving him experienced and hungry. Factor in that Hillary has the highest negatives of any candidate in history and Bush-Clinton fatigue and you have the makings of a GOP upset. Not only in the presidential race either, Hillary's polarizing nature will bring a slew of conservatives and Republicans out just to vote against Hillary and they'll vote Republican straight down the line. Will the GOP regain the House? No, but the Senate may well be a possibility if the RNC can pound home the fact that this has been the single-most inactive Senate in three decades.

I'm not going to go out on a limb and predict that a Republican wins, yet the scenario I've spelled out is plausible. We still have five months before the first primary ballot is cast (unless some state moves it up to November 2007) so a lot of things can happen between now and then.

It took awhile but the Dems are realizing that they have to grow up and face hard facts on Iraq. They appear to have passed puberty and they're now more like in the gawky teenage boy stage but the Democrats have had their little fling with the nutroots floozy and have decided they may like the more strait laced, mature type:

In the first place, the netroots candidates are losing. In the various polls on the Daily Kos Web site, John Edwards, Barack Obama and even Al Gore crush Hillary Clinton, who limps in with 2 percent to 10 percent of the vote.

...Clinton has established this lead by repudiating the netroots theory of politics. As the journalist Matt Bai makes clear in his superb book, "The Argument," the netroots emerged in part in rebellion against Clintonian politics. They wanted bold colors and slashing attacks. They didn't want their politicians catering to what Markos Moulitsas Zúniga of the Daily Kos calls "the mythical middle."

But Clinton has relied on Mark Penn, the epitome of the sort of consultant the netroots reject, and Penn's approach has been entirely vindicated by the results so far.

This is on the heels of President Bush conveying info to Hillary about how the war will continue and what will happen if she were to suddenly retreat. Listen, I may not like Hillary but the woman is pragmatic, she knows the consequences of presidential action and inaction and one suspects she learned alot while dealing with the routine "bimbo eruptions," bombings of aspirin plants and other difficulties of Bubba's two-terms. By Bush reaching out, he's showing that the good of the country outweighs the good of the party and that's refreshing.

I guess Hillary could see the political writing on the wall with regard to the vile MoveOn.org "General Betray Us" ad:

"I think it's important that we end these kinds of attacks on the patriotism of those who serve our country," Clinton said on NBC's "Meet the Press" program. "This is not a debate about an ad. This is a debate about the direction we should pursue in Iraq."

Pretty tepid and very un-Sister Souljah-like but a denunciation just the same. Of course the nutroots took this as a full-out turn by Hillary and a betrayal to the cause as laid out in highly unconvincing fashion here.

What Hamsher (the most solipsistic of the crowd who cares about small victories and has zero grasp of the larger picture) fails to see is that majority of the American public--you know, the ones who will actually vote for candidates--were appalled by the ad as well:

Twenty-three percent (23%) of Americans approve of an ad run in the New York Times "that referred to General Petraeus as General Betray Us." A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 58% disapproved. Those figures include 12% who Strongly Approve and 42% who Strongly Disapprove.

Pretty serious numbers, especially the "Strongly Disapprove". This just reinforces the theory that Americans want to win and do so with honor. Since Petraeus has taken over, things have improved dramatically and that's reflected by the consensus of nearly everyone who has seen events first-hand. Hillary does not want to get too entwined in the defeatist mentality that permeates the nutroot left and not be able to extricate herself when it comes time to woo the centrists in the general election.

It has long been rumored that Hillary doesn't take too kindly to anyone crossing her, and when they do it's usually not a pretty sight. That rumor has come to fruition with this story from the reliable Politico site, in which Hillary forced GQ magazine to spike a story discussing dissension in the Hillary camp:

Early this summer, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign for president learned that the men's magazine GQ was working on a story the campaign was sure to hate: an account of infighting in Hillaryland.

So Clinton's aides pulled a page from the book of Hollywood publicists and offered GQ a stark choice: Kill the piece, or lose access to planned celebrity coverboy Bill Clinton.

There was once a time that a magazine had editors and journalists with backbone who would run the story regardless of what they were threatened with. If the story was sourced well, then there was no fear of any legal retribution. That died when Michael Isikoff's piece on Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky was witheld by Newsweek and Drudge ran with it launching him into the stratosphere. The liberal media became the personal mouthpiece of successful Democrats and it helped give rise to blogs such as the one you are currently reading. People wanted new forms of inforantion and the MSM's reluctance to report the good and bad about people like Clintoncontributed greatly.

Hillary will indeed be the nominee and eventually will have to answer straight-forward questions while trying to lurch back to the middle from the far-left position she has staked in the primaries. It will be interesting to see if any of the leading liberal media outlets have the guts to challenge her or if it will be left to traditionally centrist or conservative outlets. My guess is the latter.

I received several comments to this post expressing disagreement with my definition of a Neocon. I find it amusing that those on the political left throw the word Neocon around without having even an iota of a clue what one is. I know -- as does most of the country -- what a Liberal is and use it accordingly when describing those that subscribe to that once-proud tenet. That word to has been bastardized and forces one to clarify it with Paleo-Liberal as it applies to folks like Christopher Hitchens, who seems astounded at times what has happened to the ideology that he espoused. The Neo-Liberals are those who believe in the ideology of Kos, MyDD and others on the left side of the blogosphere who have changed the ideals through a perverse pretzel logic. They've taken the liberalism of Truman, FDR and Kennedy and made it the anti-American, anti-military and pro-despotic belief system we see represented by the aforementioned on a daily basis. To prove my point, read this vomit-inducing, puppy dog love letter written to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at DKos penned by a "lesbian Jew" who admits that the Iranian leadership would probably "have her killed" but hey, he's better than George W. Bush (in case Kos actually gets some sense and deletes it, it's available here).

Anyway, what is a Neocon? A Neocon is someone who once believed in liberalism and were in fact themselves Liberals. They saw what happened to the liberal movement and went to the right realizing that the liberal mindset they once believed was replaced by the anti's I described above. Neocon see theocracy and despotism and believe that American might and will should crush it. When homosexuals are stoned to death or raped women are sentenced to death by Shariah courts, the greatest country in the world should step in. We also believe that democracy is in fact paramount when it comes to social and religious freedom. Anyone who has read me on any type of regular basis knows that I am a centrist on many social issues. They further know that I am not an "Evangelical" or even a practicing Christian, although I am a Christian. For a great example of what Neoconservatism is not, here's a highly simplistic, inane description that was written by someone with less than a grammar school education.

Let's explode one or two myths about Neocon thinking, shall we?

It's been an interesting week in the free speech debate; we have Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaking at Columbia University next Monday, A Colorado collegiate newspaper that runs an editorial of two words: F**K BUSH and Stanford students and faculty hitting twelve on the outrage meter that Donald Rumsfeld will participate in classes. In other words, we have a strong, healthy dose of reinvigorating the Constitutional debate happening and it's always a good exercise.

First on Ahmadinejad. I, for one, say, "let the man speak." Sunlight is a great disinfectant and perhaps an enterprising blogger or student will ask him some tough questions the media does not. Maybe we'll see him put on the spot for his references to erasing Israel and his steady quest for nukes. Heaven knows that free speech is effectively dead in his home country of Iran, where saying what you think will get you shot. We also see the anti-war people for who they are, rabid socialists who support Palestinians and abhor Israel.

In other words, a man that right-thinking people hate is allowed to speak because the political right values free speech more than the political left. The proof is available in two cases in California involving the aforementioned Rumsfeld and Larry Summers.

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was known as a man who wouldn't back down from a fight while serving as attorney general for the state. He went after corporations (his favorite targets) including: insurance, record and financial firms. He stuck it to the man at every opportunity like a good anti-Capitalist.

Now, as governor, he has the opportunity to stop crime by doing nothing, just letting a law on the books stand. But no, Spitzer has gain street cred with the other Dems and try to increase his vote among Hispanics by changing a law that stopped illegal immigrants from getting driver's licenses:

The change rolls back rules adopted four years ago under the Pataki administration that made it difficult, if not impossible, for tens of thousands of immigrants to obtain driver's licenses because they could not prove legal status. Under the new rules, the Department of Motor Vehicles will accept a current foreign passport as proof of identity without also requiring a valid yearlong visa or other evidence of legal immigration.

Just a question, governor: didn't at least three of the ten men in two planes kill thousands of people in your biggest city overstay their visas? They all had passports as I recall, so your little plan here would not have caught them.

It's coming folks, the individual states are making their moves to subvert federal law and pass their own amnesty plans. The same party that freaks out every time someone suggests that abortion should be decided by the states will have no issue with states acting on this issue. They couldn't care less about the national security implications or even the implications to local security, as long as it gets them more votes and keeps them in power, it's all good.

Spitzer has his eye on a run at the presidency and he's being a good soldier for the real leadership in New York, Hillary Clinton and Chuckie Schumer. They are the power players and whatever they want, Spitzer will give them. Keep that in mind when he runs in 2012 or 2016.

The continuing saga of Norman Hsu is showing more and more the dark underbelly of political fundraising. It keeps getting worse for the Democrats as a whole and Hillary in particular:

A Laguna Beach investment firm filed a lawsuit against Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu on Friday, claiming he defrauded investors out of at least $23 million and required them to donate to Democratic candidates.

According to the lawsuit filed by Briar Wood Investments, Hsu persuaded the company's operator to do business with him by taking him to star-studded Democratic Party events. There, the 56-year-old Hong Kong native was praised by New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown and others, the lawsuit said.

As a condition of doing business with the fundraiser, Hsu directed investors to make contributions to certain Democratic candidates, the lawsuit said. The investors turned over tens of thousands of dollars, including $30,000 worth of checks to Clinton's campaign on a single day.

Read that again, Hillary knew who he was and probably invited him to events. He used that access to persuade investors to give him money which he duly defrauded them of and also coerced them to donate to Hillary's campaign. One would think that $30,000 in one day would make the campaign take notice. $23-million will definitely make the country take notice.