Otherwise, Niccoló was pretty much a hypocrite, an opportunist, and a scumbag who has inspired petty tyrants for generations.

This wine however, is obviously a must drink for any political scientist. Like many Americans, I know nothing about wine, so I buy it based on the novelty or charm of the label. This was no exception, although I was pleased with the result.

I'm not a foodie or a wine enthusiast, but I was able to figure out that this is basically a cabernet that certainly was better than the swill wine I usually drink.

I bought this in Machiavelli's sometime home town of Florence where they apparenly have a higher opinion of him than I do.

I wonder if this babbling embodiment of balloon-juice can be taken at his word, and be persuaded to put aside his personal "politics of selfishness" that he visualizes will put him atop the collapsing throne of autocratic power in the District of Collectivism? To paraphrase Lysander Spooner, perhaps Mr. McCain might see the "national service" he could perform by ending his campaign, and returning to Arizona, there to content himself with the exercise of only so much power as nature has given to him in common with the rest of mankind.

"Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed."

To this, from one Austin Bramwell in the Takimag blog:

"Nothing short of a new national mythology could have justified
the Civil War's carnage. Lincoln preserved legitimate government
in North America . . . . For this reason conservatives . . . might
revere Lincoln."

So despite the Lincoln Cult's worshipping of the Declaration (well, actually, only the "all men are created equal" part), we are informed that governments don't derive their just powers from the consent of the governed after all. One man, in this case Dishonest Abe, is able to invent a new and ahistorical theory about America (his "nationalist mythology"), and prove himself "right" by orchestrating the mass murder of some 350,000 dissenters to the new theory. This is what preserves "legitimate government."

This of course is not new. It's the tired, old lie that Lincoln himself invented and is kept alive by such propagandists for the American empire as Harry Jaffa and his merry band of Claremontistas.

Stalin must have loved this theory -- that "legitimate government" is derived from the mass murder of those who do not consent to being governed by Stalin. I suppose that's why communist sympathizers such as Lincoln Cultist Eric Foner of columbia University opposed the break-up of the Soviet Union. In a Feb. 11, 1991 article in The Nation entitled "Lincoln's Lesson" Foner opposed the secession movements in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Georgia and urged Gorbachev to deal with them in the same brutal and barbaric manner that Lincoln dealt wiith his own citizens who didn't buy into his new theory of "nationalist man." Secession, said Foner, would destroy the "laudable goal" of "overreaching loyalty to the Soviet Union."

There are apparently no limits at all to the nonsense that Lincoln Cultists will come up with as they desperately try to invent more and more excuses for Lincoln's mass murdering of 350,000 of his own citizens.

She has a better chance against McCain though many are in denial on this including right-wing Hillary haters and left-wing Obama lovers.

The race is a statistical dead heat and anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't studied the numbers carefully.

Whenever a female waitress calls me "sweetie," the first thought I always have is to complain to the manager, sue for harassment, and try to make a national issue of it.

Sometimes I think Justin is right about the Bizarro World America has become. 9/11 -- or something -- has indeed ripped a hole in the space-time continuum, and so now petulant preachers, flag pins and endearing, old-fashioned language are the main campaign issue. Not mass murder and crimes against the Constitution.