Scoundrel Refuge Exposed: "So I've got news for you, John McCain: We all put our country first."

"But what I will not do is suggest that the senator takes his positions for political purposes, because one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other's character and each other's patriotism."

Apparently Barack Obama learned the lesson that Gore and Kerry did not: Republicans want American citizens to believe that they alone are the party of patriots. What a sham and what a shame that many Americans believe it. They alone love the military- is that why 4,100 are dead fighting a needless war? Sure, they love the military- to death!

Lots of waving flags at the stadium last evening- more than I've ever seen at a Democratic Convention. Too bad that the Dems had to resort to that GOP tactic, but apparently the citizens somehow equate flag-waving with patriotism. Recall the many flags flying at the outset of the Bush/Cheney preemptive invasion of Iraq in early 2003; many had them flying from their automobiles. Odd that those flags have come down, at least in this part of the country. Are those people less patriotic than they were in 2003 or have they realized that they were scammed?

"The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain.
The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and independents, but they have fought together, and bled together, and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a red America or a blue America; they have served the United States of America."

Of course John McCain knows that but scoundrels love to wave the flag to obscure what they are really doing. Flags cover the transfer of wealth. While the American citizens are busy waving their flags and singing God Bless America, their wealth is being transferred upwards and out of their pockets to the top echelon and to foreign markets. Reminds me of pick-pockets working the Labor Day Parade crowd. Same idea, same net result.

Our citizens were quick to jump on the patriotism bandwagon- as defined by Karl Rove and the neocon junta that seized power in 2001. Our psyche was damaged by the audacity of the 9-11 attacks on this nation. We were ripe for re-programming and we fell to it with eagerness. Revenge welled up, numbing our collective wisdom. They knew it, Rove and his band of cronies knew that we'd fall for the bait-and-switch- Saddam for bin Laden. We did and what a price we have paid for that unbridled patriotic fervor! Trillions in currency and gallons of blood.

"When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and the purity of its heart." Emerson, 1824. Lesson unlearned.