Agillious was right to ask: "Does being in the GOP mean one must constantly view oneself as a victim?"

Yes. It's as frederico deduced - the Republicans/rightwing has been fluffing less-educated, lower middle class white (male) voters for decades now. They're the real victims, they're the ones who suffer discrimination, they're the ones that nobody understands or cares about, according to Rush and the rest of the Mighty Wurlitzer of the right wing.

And, in actual fact, these undereducated, underinformed people are the ones who actually are inarticulate and sullen, conditioned to feel helpless and oppressed and thus resentful. They're not the rich white guys who own and control everything. They're not the ones on the corporate boards or the executive suites. They don't actually identify with the ruling elite - and yet, they end up supporting it.

And "libruls" who equate these guys with the ruling elite solely on the basis of their shared race just reinforce the sense of victimization.

Covering this phenomenon is not an "obsession" with Mr. Limbaugh. It's an elucidation of the techniques of the whole media monster that the right has created. There's a "heads I win, tails you lose" quality to their message that needs to be deconstructed and addressed.

Good speech! A few nits:

When the President talked about America's most sacred day, 911, and the fear it engendered here, he might have noted that al-Qaida then struck in Spain, England, and Indonesia as well. It would have made his speech even more inclusive, less US-centric, more acknowledging that al-Qaida is not just an enemy of the United States.

The unending trials of the Jews. Given the audience, I would suggest slightly less than equal time for their sufferings, versus the more recent tribulations of the Palestinians, the Lebanese, etc. Not to ignore the whole Hitler schtick: just tone it down a little. What's Hitler done lately, anyway? You say he's dead?!

Like I said, I liked the speech. And I do see it as a major policy changer. The pundits keep forgetting the 8 long years of George Bush the Lesser...

... from regular prime-time scripted television? Outside of the production values and air time, of course.

Jim White theorizes "...so if he [Cheney] had the emails, it was from his getting copies of virtually everything on a government server."

One of the big deals with the Bush/Cheney White House was that they used Republican Party servers for all of their official business. The theory was that since these computers were privately owned, they were not subject to any of the government record-keeping requirements. In fact, emails were routinely "lost" and backups destroyed.

This, of course, was just another trough of the legal hogwash dumped out by Bush/Cheney.

It's sad that the dynamic of "if you like Hillary, you hate Obama" and vice versa still seems to prevail.

That said, I'd also like to remind y'all about the unbelievable level of sleazy sexist sneers and attacks on then-Senator Clinton during the presidential campaign. She never got a break, yet she fought then-Senator Obama nearly to a draw. And even THAT was cause for pundit and Salon reader rage - "why doesn't she just drop out?!?"

Nobody could believe that Hillary Clinton could ever work with Barack Obama. Nobody could imagine that she wouldn't, Cheney-like, labor ceaselessly in the shadows to stab Mr. Obama in the back, whether she was part of his administration or not.

Methinks there's a lot of projection going on in "analyses" of Secretary of State Clinton. YOU can't figure out Hillary Clinton because she's mature, well-balanced, realistic, understands how politics works, and can work it to get things done.

Frankly, that's not HER fault.

... with the Medicare funding crisis.

If more of us geezers could go out quietly and serenely on a deadly cocktail when we were ready, instead of having to spend hundreds of thousands and more on "heroic" medicine: the surgeries, the life support measures, more surgeries, months in the hospital, yet more surgeries, medical devices, appliances, and supplies, finally culminating in the decision of whether to turn off the machines, long after actual life has fled.

Sure, you would pay anything to prolong your life - unless maybe it was no longer much like "life" - at least, any life that would be worth living. Or if you no longer knew whether or not you still lived.

Then euthanasia, or even simple permitted decline, might be a blessing. What would Terry Schiavo have done, if she'd been around to make her decision?

Plus, think of the savings.

Last weekend, the lines to get into the gun show were so long that we eventually just left.

At gun stores, ammunition shelves are all but empty - the cheap stuff, not surprisingly, went first. The local police department is complaining about being short on ammo, because the manufacturers insist they've sold out.

Yesterday, some deranged malcontented old geezer tried to shoot up the National Holocaust Museum - with a rifle! (whatta maroon - if he really wanted to cause massive death and injury indoors, he'd have brought a shotgun...)

And - this terrorist Tiller Killer says there are lots more such terrorist plots in the works. It's another "bin Ladin Determined to Strike in the US" memo. Only this time, it's public.