...this was really a very revealing moment, if we just look at it carefully. It's an un-camouflaged moment. We see the people who run the country protecting themselves.

And if you think Larry King doesn't help run the country, you are mistaken. He has millions of viewers who believe everything he says. Just just as every mainstream media figure does. These people are proxies, by design, for the people who actually run the country and make the big money.

HW Bush? I'm not sure I'll ever understand him. I suppose that if you look at him, and his family, like, say, the Sopranos, it all makes a kind of sense. Loyalty above all else. Loyalty to family, to clan. It is the most primitive kind of socialization. If you look at our government over the last six years as a single American clan raiding the Federal cookie jar, suddenly, everything fits.

This has been a nightmare time for our country. I wish there were going to be some way to bring the Bushes, father and son, and Cheney, and Rove, and Wolfowitz, and Addington, and Rumsfeld, and all the rest of them, to some kind of justice. But there will be no justice. Think about that. All these criminals--criminals, proven--will go off to their fat sinecures and secure sites and never answer for anything they've done.

The Bush interregnum has revealed just what kind of society we are: a society of bandits, without principle, without scruple, without conscience.

MP3 sounds like total crap. Pure and simple. The only reason anyone would stand it is if they had never heard the alternative: properly reproduced analog (expensive and annoyingly kluge-y, believe me, I know), or a 98.2 sampled CD, or a plain-old 44.1 played back on a reasonably high-quality player/processor.

Here's what's going to happen: the de-facto MP3 standard will become so ubiquitous no-one will ever remember there was anything else. Producers will produce with that terrible, inferior standard, and actually make it sound ok, whatever that means...then, someone with clout will suddenly "rediscover" analog or high-quality digital audio storage and reproduction, and, Presto! a new fad. The MP3 standard won't fade though, because most people will never be able to tell how absolutely, utterly, completely, irredeemably, grotesquely awful it sounds.

Because it does. Sound awful. It's spit in the eye to 80 years of evolving quality-of-reproduction in audio. It's enough to make me weep, tell you the truth. MP3 isn't even a moped. It's a pair of roller-skates. The old kind. With the metal wheels.

My own father, gone now 35 years (he died when I was a teenager), was a good man. Seldom, if ever, lost his temper. But, if you did something that was over the line (and we knew where the line was), he hardly had to say a word. He'd just look at you. That's all. And it was quite enough.

We almost never did anything that was over the line when my Dad was alive. Not so much because we were afraid of him--he was always very affectionate, and never hit us, ever--but because we respected him. Ok. We were afraid of him. A little. But, mostly, we didn't want to disappoint him.

And we *never* wanted to know what would happen if we went over the line. Ever. Now, had he lived into our teen years, no doubt there would have been conflict. Tough conflict. But we're not talking about 16-year-olds here, and I suspect that even as teens my sister and I would have been careful about crossing my Dad. He was just one of those charismatic people you didn't cross.

His ability to control his children with merely a look, or a quiet word, has been a source of amazement to me ever since, especially when I watch other parents fail so miserably at the same task.

Same with a music teacher I once had. He could walk into a room, stand in front of a group of restless high-school kids, and they would fall completely silent, ready to do whatever he wanted. And you did NOT want to know what would happen if you crossed him. You really didn't.

It's personal power. And more parents should cultivate it. Then there would be no need for name-calling. Or anything else.

Poor Laura.

Awhile back here on Salon, a poster made it clear what Bush's *real* attitude is toward "the troops." This poster said that they grew up in the social circle in which Bush moved, and rich, reactionary families like the Bush family regard "the troops" as disposable pawns. These people feel that medical care for GIs is optional. Maybe an officer should have good medical care. Otherwise, "let 'em eat cake" is the Bush motto.

In short, Bush doesn't give a shit about "the troops"--he never has. And his actions, or lack of them, prove that about as clearly as anything could be proved.

I swear, I cannot wait for a couple of tell-all memoirs from people inside the White House. Even the inevitable hagiographies of Bush will contain some pretty obvious hints of what he's really like. And all it's going to take is one true-believer losing faith, and Bush and Cheney will be exposed for all the world, and all of history, to see. The man is a disgrace. An utter disgrace. As is his father. And his mother.

The entire Bush family has been a thorough disaster for this country. In some other time, we'd have tarred and feathered the whole lot of them.

you know...I feel really sorry for the people around you. Wife. Girlfriend Children. Relatives. Friends. Colleagues. I assume you have some.

Because having to deal with you must be a distinctly trying affair. You have as powerful a problem with denial as I have ever heard of, or seen in clinical literature. And I've read quite a bit of it. I think you're the one who needs professional help.