There are some good graphical representations that might be useful (they're also pretty attractive):

http://historyshots.com/store.cfm

Also, re:

the criticisms of Dems... you won't find a community more disposed to criticism when warranted, or more specifically, when useful. Useful does not include repeating GOP memes and talking points. Continuing to do Karl Rove's work for him, even now that he's left the WH, is just plain crazy. Make him do his own dirty work for a change. He's clearly teetering on the brink... I don't think we need to provide him with any handholds.

...and elections and two-party system... we would be better served to get the REALLY BIG money out of the system, and require the media conglomerates, many of whom are licensed to use PUBLIC air waves, to donate air time. That's where the really big expenses are. Commercial air time. And it's a sin. (And I rarely make such statements.) Another solution that would be helpful would be to institute some sort of automatic run-off, or, perhaps better, a system that calculates 2nd choices, along the lines of the Iowa caucuses. Without doing those things first, there's really no way for a viable third party to emerge.

Last point, failing to consider the effect of GOP party loyalty, when opposed to one's own loyalty to country first, seems naive these days, though it wouldn't have some decades ago. The GOP wants you to put country first, and ignore their own tremendous gains via successful power grabs during the Bush maladministration. Fighting back against that "coup" requires acknowledging it, not simply ignoring partisanship as a means of taking the high road.

Sometimes I wonder if the best choice is simply to vote for the candidate who seems most likely to accelerate the process in the hope that things might actually get bad enough quickly enough so that the whole edifice might collapse and we could start over. What do you think, Che? Giuliani in 2008?

What makes you think this isn't how we already ended up with Bush, if not the first time, then the second? It's easy to make a comment like that when you can just sit and watch from the sidelines because you don't have much skin of your own in the game, but lots of people who do have been sorely affected by this maladministration.

I don't usually respond to comments like this one, but the "bad faith" negativity on this thread that wants to encourage everyone else either to give up or start a revolution (since nothing else would be supportable) is beginning to wear...

Now that you are addressing one another directly, Aycharaych, Talesofunrest, & Dounia, maybe you could take it to an IM session? Kitt's right; we're not that interested, and LWM has too much patience... not for incrementalism, but for responding to your comments. I usually have more patience, too, but it's just about used up.

Don't you just love the sound of that?

I know. I was surprised when I wrote that, too, but I think it's true, especially when it comes to holding down some of these sub-threads to the Reality of the earth plane.

I can't quite put my finger on it, but I have noticed something different about the overall tone in your posts.

So I think our efforts would be best employed by incrementally chipping away or tossing pebble by pebble as GG and other bloggers are so capable of doing.

Glenn's efforts may not [yet] have as much impact as hand grenades, but at a minimum, they are in the cherry bomb category, don't you think?

And perhaps that much quicker retraction at the WaPo re: Obama's religion was at least partly in response to their observing the relentless attacks on Time re: Joe Klein?

As for the rest of us, I'll settle for the pebbles, but I still prefer the sawing-the-legs-off-the-table metaphor a bunch of you settled on one or two posts ago.

See looseheadprop's most recent post at FDL:

http://firedoglake.com/2007/12/07/will-american-lawyers-take-to-the-streets-in-support-of-the-rule-of-law-in-the-us/

a response to a call from a lawyer inspired by an earlier post by looseheadprop on a speech by Mario Cuomo.

http://firedoglake.com/2007/11/23/our-lady-of-the-law/

Newsweek just hired Karl Rove!

I say put them both behind Harper's!