While a normal person might say WTF to the rantings of the righty troll du jour, I find them fascinating. Beneath the bluster, hostility, and craziness, one can't help but notice the pathologies, hanging out like a plumber's crack, beneath the tough-guy words. Masculine insecurity is always the primary one, as evidenced by the transparent references to others in feminine terms like "mincing." I bet Jeff Gannon uses those words too, between "dates."

Ooh, it's manly to have a barroom brawl at the keyboard.... kind of like a war others must fight.

The next one is projection borne of self loathing. Being a slavish devotee of a twisted ideology that requires hook, line, and sinker adoption of all its tenets, no matter how disordered or contradictory, the troll must believe that others possess similar mindless fealty. Hence the constant mind-reading and lumping together of eveyone's views.

The last, and perhaps the saddest, is the comfort with, and even desire to be loathed. Why else are they here? I guess they're used to it.

Walter, I'm afraid you have. But don't worry, because it's been a singular delight to watch. Kind of like the horror movie where you keep yelling, "Don't go in there!" But the clueless ninny does anyway, and you aren't really sorry about it.

Walter, I'm in stitches, catching up with the battle I've "inadvertently" (eyelashes batting innocently) started. Have these bozos ever heard of "the lady doth protest too much?" Or, reaching a bit further, "Pride goeth before the fall?"

Nope.

Blanche DuBois said it best, "Thousands of years of civilization have simply passed him by."

1) Troll appears, says obviously self-discrediting thing, based on made-up facts from wingnut ticker tape machine.

2) Well-placed brickbats ensue by the reality-based community.

3) Troll, unaccountably emboldened, flails wildly, foot firmly in mouth.

4) Hail of rotten tomatoes, precisely aimed.

5) Troll, visibly bloodied but nonetheless overconfident, angrily and profanely inserts other foot.

6) Multiple refutations, often including quotes, citations, and statistics, bury troll in inconvenient facts.

7) Out of feet, Troll places both arms and a small piece of furniture in mouth; at this point stream of profanities not always intelligible.

8) Those not bored yet point out large number of foreign objects in Troll's mouth.

9) Just to "show 'em," Troll inserts 1978 Buick Electra in mouth, and declares victory.

10) Everyone gets a chuckle.

While it is tempting, and appropriate, to excoriate the Democrats for this travesty, the more significant difference between today and the 1970's lies with the Republicans, the judiciary, and the media.

When the details of the government's illegal spying first broke, I felt for a moment that this would be the revelation that would finally begin the necessary and inexorable journey to impeachment. Then, nothing, And now this.

What was differnet then was that there were members of the administration, like Hugh Sloan and John Dean who, regardless of motive, were at least conflicted enough to come forward and speak on the record to the media and, eventually, Congress. There were also a number of old-school Republicans, liberal and conservative, who truly believed in small government, and for whom the Nuremburg Trials were still a searing memory, who chose the rule of law above partisanship. There were also newspaper publishers who, when the chips were down, were willing to place themselves in financial and legal jeopardy, both to preserve their reputations, and hold the government to account. Furthermore, they could do so secure in the knowledge that the courts would uphold the constitution even in the face of authoritarian onslaught.

Today, we have a Rupublican party of lockstep automatons, a media of timid, faceless, and corrupt corporations, and a judiciary packed with blind, proud authoritarians.

That the Democrats have a few corrupt quislings pressing for these ghastly usurpations is disgusting, but it is unclear as to whether it would make a difference if they didn't.

Bucky, I would like to propose, both for brevity and hilarity as well as for practical reasons, that in the future you should assume the mantle of UT's official responder to Pwoximity.

""May your death take a long time and be really instructive to you" is the kind of response of which such namby-pamby liberals as myself, Kitt and WT, despite our purported warmonger tendencies, are simply incapable of conjuring, with or without chemical assistance.

What a relief it is that someone unencumbered with our "far-left" taint, worn like the scarlet "L," can summarize what the HELL we are talking about in such a devastatingly succint manner that our pathetically ineffectual appeals to reason and facts are rendered utterly meaningless.

And did you have to put on earplugs to drown out the sound of crickets that followed?

Bucky, although I am not ordinarily so promiscuous in my affections, I raise my turban to you.

For some unaccountable reason, I harbor a certain optimism about Bush and the Republicans' preposterous and absurd performances today, as well as the media's bizarre and obvious dissembling on telecom immunity. The arguments are so weak, shifting, and ridiculous that surely the public must be both dumbfounded and disgusted.

Worse than Sept. 11, Bush? Prying lawyers, Roberts? Stomping out of the room to defend contempt, Republicans? Do these idiots realize that they have no credibility left? Or that they're about as popular as crabs in a whorehouse? Anyone who believes a word they say is simply a nincompoop.

Apparently, Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer have noticed that Bush Dogs are being, uh, put to sleep lately, and are finally noticing that the House of Representatives is at least nominally supposed to, well, represent something.

Maybe I'm imagining things, but the public's revulsion at the performance of our Congress, and the attempts by corrupt officials to defend themselves so heartbreakingly desperate and pathetic, that even serial enablers like Pelosi seem to be noticing.

Who'da thunk?

Sysprog... The Holt speech is posted at Think Progress; great stuff. The great part of that joke is that just as his father had never been in a grocery store, Bush has never paid a bill. The rich really are different.