Having completed the arduous, up the down escalator process of reading the comments today, I must say, "Better Concern Trolls, Please." Puh-leeeze! Dear Ms. O'Donnell, although your technique is somewhat quirky and charming, compared to the nincompoops with which everyone is drearily familiar, your thesis is utterly indistinguishable from that of the more usual trolls, who gasp in horror that the left would ever stoop so low as to use, even for a moment, the only and most effective tactic the right has been using to escape cryingly deserved criticism of its hypocrisy since it finally concentrated so much unused wealth unto itself to buy its own shiny new "movement."

Having not a single policy proposal, idea, or initiative that could ever be sold honestly to an informed electorate, the right has turned to absurd, below-the-belt smears, misdirection, and risibly false "narratives" to gain office and then cement their power by looting the treasury and quite violently quashing dissent. Aided by a vapid Peanut Gallery of conflicted and complicit media conglomerates and the stars they enrich, this strategy has been stunningly and devastatingly effective, and indeed have lowered the discourse to a point where it can no longer be measured.

When obscene wealth, undemocratically privileged media monopolies, and people with a truly sociopathic lust for power join forces to manipulate and misinform a resentful, strapped, and uninformed public to achieve nefarious, "heads I win tails you lose" ends, through utterly concocted and counterfactual means, taking the high road, to put it mildly, is a chump's game.

The political graveyards are littered with politicians who fell for such falsely pious advice, and any even mildly small-d democratic politician who fails to learn these lessons will end up there, too, perhaps with a lovely, high-minded epitaph to console us all.

You're so full of shit it sticks out.

Glenn, and others here realize this, and whether we like it or not, this is how the game is played.

To lament this is both reasonable and honorable, but to declare it off limits is tantamount to doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result, which is of course either crazy or so cynically manipulative as to place oneself, figuratively, maybe, on the payroll of the righties who pay by the post. (guilty sidelong glance into camera...)

Adultery, false heroism in a failed war (the point is to NOT be captured, last time I checked), ridiculous wealth and a career of opportunism and corruption are splattered all over McCain like the mark of the beast.

Expose them. Since it's too late for early, let's go for often.

I'd happily take such a job, were I not spending all my productive hours painting and wrangling with the Bureau of development services...

.... of Purina Troll Chow, Mooser. That' schizophrenic harridan has had her fill.

Thanks, EP, and Arne and the others who want her to just finally pop, like the blueberry girl in Willy Wonka. The ever changing persona... viper to victim, crocodile to coquette, sad to slimy, all leavened with a shooterlike ability to slither away from reasoned criticism and latch on to intemperate words tossed in in passing, however scathingly true.

The only common thread in her histrionics is doing what gets attention, not unlike a child overdue for military school.

Budding psychologists could find a veritable treasure trove of pathology, all rolled into an ever-changing yet curiously consistent ball of narcissism and demented self-regard.

A human bus-bench, emblazoned with "Your Name Here."

Has she ever grasped the concept of "archives?"

If y'all ever feel that sanity might be slipping away, just read the complete works of Ms. O'Donnell, and you'll feel a lot better.

Jeez, Sister, I guess I bring out the worst in people, as you have so emphatically demonstrated. Good luck wiping your credibility up off the floor.

To snobbishly quote literature, a practice of which you're so fond, i'll drag out Oscar Wilde.

"There are times when it's more than a moral duty to speak one's mind, it becomes a pleasure."

And to duly do so, I'll draw on (admittedly antiquated) popular culture... From "The Women," by Claire Boothe Luce... "There's a word for girls like you, but it isn't often heard in polite society, outside of a kennel."

Thanks for the memories, Peach Pit.

Jeez, Sister, I guess I bring out the worst in people, as you have so emphatically demonstrated. Good luck wiping your credibility up off the floor.

To snobbishly quote literature, a practice of which you're so fond, i'll drag out Oscar Wilde.

"There are times when it's more than a moral duty to speak one's mind, it becomes a pleasure."

And to duly do so, I'll draw on (admittedly antiquated) popular culture... From "The Women," by Claire Boothe Luce... "There's a word for girls like you, but it isn't often heard in polite society, outside of a kennel."

Thanks for the memories, Peach Pit.

Uncle Fester... Sounds like we may almost be too late in downing that heavenly-sounding libation. Chop chop! It's Saturday afternoon, and the weather report says, "Thirsty, With increasingly thirstiness toward dusk." It's Full Sail month here in little Beirut, and I bet I'm ahead of you....

Unc. Fester... Here on the 13th floor, a snowless but still splendid Mt Hood looms in the distance, and the city spreads before me in the foreground. Proud to say, I was at that Peace rally that earned my dear hometown that absurd, pejorative nickname from Daddy Bush. Come visit sometime.