If irritating serious people is fun to you, then you can enjoy talking Limbaugh trash, Tea Partying your ass off and voting Palin/Beck, The Acting-Out choice. For grownups, the choices are tougher.

Since the mainstream still rules the electorate, irresponsible clowns like Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, et. al. are useful to the Dems as a way to cripple the GOP - so the Dems are not going to make them go away. As you say, Joan, that won't happen until responsible elements within the GOP itself can manage the job. But Palin does apparently have some appeal, charismatic "moderate" leadership a la Reagan (actually an extremist masquerading as a moderate) is always in short supply, and toning down the stupids would not be an easy job for anyone. They're too outrageous and entertaining for the news industry to overlook even if the Repubs come up with a decent candidate. (So you're forgiven for writing so much about the mysterious appeal of a useless dirtbag).

Of course the longer the stupids rule their party, the harder it will be for more mainstream-acceptable Republicans to regain control. They must be sweating bullets, waiting for their next savior and expecting the worst at voting booths until then. And it is frightening to imagine what will happen if no one steps up. No, Palin/Beck won't be the ticket. But if the GOP pushes a stiff like Romney as their next presidential candidate, the stupidity will continue to dominate their party, and the net-net on that is that the US will effectively be reduced to a single-party government.

Even as one who normally lands on the "liberal" side of issues, I think it's important for even "our side" to have healthy opposition. Nothing keeps politicians as honest and responsive as having to actually compete for their jobs.

Steve, I think you got the tone right, but your fantasy is FAR too literate, intelligent and funny to be a realistic take on SP's private conversations. You also make the private Palin sound sincere about her bizarre convictions. In her case, sincerity doesn't ring true. Palin appears to have no personal convictions, just a determination to make money.

Try another take with The Palin Image as Product, marketed by incompetents, led by a naked opportunist.

In the US, the "rush to war" program comes around so frequently now that the routine is almost formulaic. Demonic, maniacal enemies - check! Scary video clips - check! Toughguy talk from American bigshots - check! Next come the personal-horror soundbytes from pitiful "just-like-you" victims - look for old 9/11 footage interspersed with clips from a yelling Ahmadinejad, never mind the lack of factual connection, just connect them visually.

And never mind that Iran is no more threat to the US than anyone else who hates our guts - at this point, quite a long list of sensible people worldwide.

There's no question that the war promotion program is underway, the only question is why. Unfortunately, the answer could be as simple as that the war industry needs it. Funding for Iraq is ramping down and Afghanistan doesn't look like it will take up the slack. $Multibillion (but inoperable) missile defense system terminated. The hugely expensive (unused, unusable) F 22 terminated, (useless but expensive) new helicopter program terminated. Sluggish sales for civilian aircraft, satellites and launching systems. NASA budget stagnant for years. Poor Blackwater is not the only war-based firm scrambling to find anything they can sell.

After wasting trillions to devastate Iraq, I would personally hope that we weren't that easily manipulated again so soon. But someone apparently thinks we are, and they seem to believe they have the skill, cash and clout to make a feasible stab at starting another war. Unfortunately, they might be right. After all, we'll let politicians use one terrorist attack as an excuse to strip us of our civil liberties. We are the Land of the Easily Scared.

Franks' rhetoric about abortion is so far over the line you can't see the line from there. Abortion is legal, and there are excellent reasons - moral reasons - for it to remain so. If Rep. Franks himself somehow got someone pregnant, he would not be legally OR MORALLY entitled to any say in whether his own partner had an abortion. He has even less conceivable "right" to impose his will on strangers.

In truth, an "enemy of humanity" would be one who imposed a death sentence on millions of people. For example, they might do any one of the following:

- Start a war for no particular reason, resulting in the death and mutilation of millions of human beings,

- Encourage the proliferation of nuclear weapons by needlessly threatening small, defenseless non-nuclear-capable countries,

- Obstruct important medical research that could save the lives of millions,

- Refuse to consider providing adequate medical care to a third of his own country's population,

- Give for-profit corporations free rein to make life-or-death decisions about their customers, or

- Recklessly mismanage the world's largest economy for the short-term advantage of campaign donors, thereby leaving the world economy at the point of near-total collapse, with millions worldwide broke and starving.

Someone who did all of the above - or someone who aided and abetted in it all - THAT, in fact, is an unspeakable monster.