Bahhummingbug... It took me 33 juleps to get through the comments today; are you single? I'm interested. Speaking of 33 juleps, it would only have been 22 had it not been for the continual and unseemly brawling of Kitt and Bucky. Boys, please report to the 13th floor Gitmo for the vicious and gleeful spanking you both have earned, in spades. You're both right, on many levels, but that doesn't mean you don't deserve a thorough whuppin, which I would be both honor-bound and delighted to administer.

LWM and Jnagarya, get in line, you're next.

I firmly believe we have a responsibility to leave petty, personal brawls and personal attacks to the trolls; Lord knows they've got 'em, and know how to use 'em.

What were we actually talking about, before the recent (five hours) unpleasantness?

Basically, the Right, as Glenn makes drearily plain, have completely abandoned, in favor of what Mike Royko once derided as "television babble," honest political discourse. They have done this for just the reason Glenn posits, that their ideas are so bonkers and detrimental to most of us that they simply cannot be sold honestly, and must therefore rely on cheesy gimmicks, easy credit, and ignorance. They are the vinyl siding of the political world.

Meanwhile, the hopelessly corrupted and embarrassingly dumb media continue to chant, in unison, "Never paint again!" and a lot of otherwise sentient people think, "Yeah, I'll take it."

Although I think it has to be handled delicately, as another, carbon-dated early poster said, and I paraphrase out of simple fatigue, reforming, (I say marginalizing, like a lot of others) the turd-errific media is the only long-term cure.

Whether it be through the Sherman Antitrust Act, the Fairness Doctrine, or some return to the crying need for "public service" as a cost of hogging the public airwaves, I can't say.

But the fact is that when the bloated corporate foxes are the only ones guarding the henhouse of Democracy, we're all f*cked. Permanently.

PS. Great info today as always, Sysprog, and great reality check as always, GC.

Che's last post, revealing Keller's plainly stated and obvious rejection of Gordon's brand of "reporting," gives me some hope. And continuing to expose it as such is the only thing we have, and I'll take it. As I read the story in the paper, primed for it by Glenn's H/T, I was still astonished at the thinness of the sourcing, and the numbingly bland delivery of such twaddle, as though it bore any resemblance to the truth.

I agree with the numerous posters who ask, with a red print left over from slapping their foreheads, "Does this guy have an EDITOR?" For the love of God, I hope not. I was in journalism school many moons ago, and such a story would have been greeted with universal derision, if only because it bore the telltale signs of spurious, lame, and desperate invention. Writing anything, even of no great import, requires some kind of sourcing to give a semblance of that hallowed "objectivity," if nothing else. Whereas something jotted down from the whispers of known liars, using the same tactics to sell the same thing that made an ass of you before, is so suicidally self-discrediting that said "reporter" should really start filling out applications at Home Depot.

Bahhummingbug.... I'm in love with bebop, too, but he knows that already. Being preternaturally promiscuous, however, I fell for you the rest of the way when you wrote, "If I could find my gun, I'd shoot Hell off hinges." The delicious blend of archaic and trashy tipped me over. Glad you checked back in, sober to boot.

The problem with Lieberman, as has been amply and ably analyzed here, is that he has embraced the most disturbing, anti-American, and violent positions of the Republicans, and thereby given them a "bipartisan" gloss. Clearly, he saw the political value in appealing to the worst human instincts in the electorate, and rode this discovery to a shameful and treacherous "victory" in 2006.

There's a reason why the authoritarian trolls here defend him so ardently. While those who seek to live out their sadistic fantasies through politics are only about a third of the electorate, boy howdy are they committed. (and ought to be...) This is the same subset of Americans who thought Nixon was too liberal in his first term, but fell all in love as Watergate unfolded.

Whether by design or happy accident, Bush and company discovered this constituency, which under the right climate of fear and uncertainty, could be reliably augmented to command a slim majority of voters and a path to power. The best part is that they shared the rarest and most desirable quality of Nixon's dead-enders, a blind, "don't confuse me with the facts" loyalty, and because of their inherent tendencies toward submission to power and lust for domination, made a great "base," which could then be turned against internal enemies. Not unlike Hitler's brownshirts, which The Dixie Chicks et al soon found out.

Still, I have hope that the craziness, combined with the spectacular failure, of the hopes and dreams of this bunch will make both McCain and Lieberman equally nauseating and repellent to the electorate, and even Senate Democrats, as events unfold.

While Reid has discredited himself and his party in his vacillating and infuriatingly equivocal treatment of Holy Joe, he also may have given him the rope he needs to hang himself, with a yard or two left over for McCain, who is after all, kind of a shrimp, and won't need much.