I expect Mr. Morris is right in all particulars, or the chief ones, anyway.

But, this war could well destroy the GOP. If we're still there, more or less the way we're "there" now, in the Fall of 2008, how many people here think the GOP will get much more than 30% of the popular vote? That's a disaster for the party, you ask me.

So, Bush and Cheney have a problem. They want to hang on in Iraq until they're out of office, so they can say to the Base, "we didn't lose Iraq"-- but they may take the entire GOP down with them. Surely GOP politicians can't be too happy about that prospect.

It's going to be very interesting to see how Bush and Cheney try to have it both ways: shore up the party while staying in Iraq. I haven't seen much yet that makes sense, although as long as the GOP Base keeps believing Bush's lies, the party will probably hang onto the South and parts of the midwest (like Oklahoma..those poor, benighted devils..with representatives like they have, you have to wonder who in hell lives in Oklahoma anyway? Is the voting population in that state the result of some kind of genetic experiment gone badly wrong??)

I can't help wondering about what sort of speech the new Democratic president will make about Iraq in early 2009. Were I that president I'd be sorely tempted to break with tradition, and just fire away, point-blank, with both barrels, directly at Bush and Cheney. Let the chips fall where they may. Blame those two traitors for the whole thing, have facts and figures handy and easily understood, and just bury those fuckers so that even the Base is uneasy. Because otherwise the noise-machine will blame the dems for everything. That seems to be the plan right now: blame the dems for everything. It might work too...unless the new dem president is willing to break tradition, and shine the lights on the crimes of their predecessor in office.

Now, all the X-Y chromosome types here, tell me if I'm at all in the ballpark here. Being an X-Y type myself, as I watched as episode of "The Bachelor" with my girlfriend, I could not help turning to her and asking "so, do you think he bangs all these women at some point or other? Or does he get to bang only a few of them, near the end? Or does he space out the banging, and take what he can get?"

Watching the show, my first thought was "if I were him, my sole goal here would be to do every, single one of these women. Every one. It'd be a game. They want to make it to the end of the show. They have no way of knowing me well enough to know who I'll pick, or why. They almost *have* bang me if they are to have any hope of staying in the game."

Am I right about this at all? Does someone here have the inside scoop on how this show actually works? I know I'm way behind the curve here, since the show has been on for some year now, but I'm very curious about this. From where I sit, the sole reason an X-Y chromosome-type would put himself through this (other than for the money) would be for the tail. Surely the main goal for the guy here is to see just how many of these women he can get into the sack.

More to the point, when I was single, I had no idea if I even wanted to hang out with a woman unless we made the beast first..let alone whether I wanted to marry her. Ya know? So, surely, he gets them all, sooner or later, right? Or nearly all. How could he not?

Someone want to enlighten me here?

And, guys, surely I'm right about this. Wouldn't YOU try to bang every last one of them, in a similar situation? The guy holds ALL the cards here. Seems like a perfect opportunity for a lot of recreational sex.

Or, maybe I'm just a scuzz-ball. I could be right, and be a scuzz-ball..but, mostly, I'm interested in knowing how close I am to the truth of the matter.

I have not read Mr. Vollmann's work in its entirety, but I have read excerpts and other critical observations of his work... not that that makes me an expert..hardly. But, based on this article, I have to say, Mr. Vollmann could use a good stiff dose of Darwin.

If we look around at our fellow humans (too damned many of us on this poor planet, btw, and that's part of the problem, although hardly all), it is abundantly clear that we are selected by evolution to dominate our immediate environment, and beyond that, to dominate our fellow humans, and exploit them whenever we can, reciprocal altruism notwithstanding.

In short, poor people, fucked-up people, exploited people, are just part of the natural order of things. Until human beings are willing to try to buck their own evolutionary imperatives, that's how it'll be.

I fail to understand Vollmann's fascination. This is all simply evolutionary theory made flesh. Feeling guilty about evolutionary programming is like expecting a robot to feel love. Makes no sense at all.

I can feel guilty about my personal acts of selfishness and heedlessness, but to feel guilty about the state-of-man? That's a pointless act.