I LOVE Tom Oliphant (part XXXIV)

He's been on fire on Franken's show for the past 15 minutes or so, talking about Bush's speech and Iraq.

I highly recommend downloading the podcast for the show's third hour if you missed it.

well, okay, I'm kicking my own post. But seriously, this is Kerry related. Tom was talking about how he's been trying to think back to the way he felt about Vietnam and to recapture his clear sense back then of what was the right and honorable course of action to take.

He said he thinks it's time to just get out, on a planned timetable.

he felt about Vietnam or is he saying Kerry is trying to think back to how he felt about Vietnam. Does Kerry think it's time to get out? Sorry, I only have a dial up so I can't download it.

He wasn't speaking for Kerry. The upshot was that he's changed his thinking on the subject and now feels we just need to stop - I forget the term he used, but it was akin to nitpicking - and just get out. He said he's also been thinking a lot about Paul Wellstone.

It was very moving - he's usually kind of calm and droll, but he was very passionate about this. He said it was irrelevant whether dems "have a plan" or not - he said Kerry and other dems had already come up with a pile of reasonable plans, any of which could work better than more of the same.

As best I can recall, anyway. I'm not great at recreating conversation, but this one was riveting.

Can you play podcasts over the net? I don't have an mp3 player.

I always love Tom, and this sounds like an especially good one.