I have remained steadily optimistic as a result of the inspiring reports of the great progress of our Glorious Surge, accompanied by the re-assuring vows that we are now on the Road to Sweet Victory.

You might also be quite happy and encouraged to hear that tractor production is up 38%, which is double-plus good.

The rosy scenarists are getting scary now. McCain and Pence are now so deluded that they are a danger to themselves and others. Take off those flak jackets and get them into a straightjacket.

Since when does a visit to an outdoor Indiana market require a dangerous pre-visit sector sweep, personal body armor, 100 battle ready troops, 3 Blackhawk and 2 Cobra Attack 'Copters.

Gary is a very dangerous city. Few people make it out of Ft. Wayne with all their limbs. The gutters in Crown Point are often choked with blood. The Benjamin Harrison Home and Museum in Indianapolis was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade this morning. The sectarian violence between the Baptists and Pentacostals takes the form of bloody suicide bombing in Hammond. You can't walk the streets of Muncie without tripping over a torso. James Dean's boyhood home in Fairmont has been turned into a makeshift morgue. That burning smell in Evansville isn't a backyard barbeque, it's a family of five burning to death. James Dean's boyhood home in Fairmont has been turned into a makeshift morgue. The Wabash River runs red most of the year. That foul odor in South Bend isn't coming from the Notre Dame locker room, it's from the hundreds of unmarked shallow graves.

You know, I learned the details of a few confusing episodes in history but never understood the hows and whys. For instance, how could World War I have started, and why did it go on with such barbarism for so long? The rise of the neo-cons over the past two and a half decades have made this irrational and needlessly violent episode of history much clearer.

And more particularly, the Bush administration has made it completely clear to me the thought process behind the invention and deployment of the guillotine.

Isn't the problem with the press and the Democrats who voted for the war that the right wing was going to use their words and/or votes against them? Isn't fear of that what produced the four-plus year quagmire in Iraq that has cost hundreds of billions, killed tens of thousands, and ruined our international reputation?

Isn't it time that we make our votes, speak our minds, and do our jobs on the basis of what is right and appropriate instead of making these kinds of calculations? Grover Norquist deserves every bit of ridicule, scorn and sarcasm we can muster, because he's laid it on pretty thick for more than two decades.

Screw 'em.

The current President of the United States and his administration has repeatedly lied outright, intentionally distorted the truth, used leaks to the media discredit his enemies, and even planted phony journalists to lob softball questions on a consistant basis from the very first day in office (remember the bogus story that outgoing Clinton staffers had sabotaged the office equipment?). They have lied about things as large and consequential as a four-year plus war halfway acrosss the world costing hundreds of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives--- and they've lied and misled on things as small and inconsequential as the fake turkey on Bush's Thanksgiving 2003 trip to Iraq. They are pathological in their lying, to the extent that if they said the sky was blue, I'd feel compelled to check.

If that isn't ample reson for skepticism, then tell me what is.

Now Rush Limbaugh and all three of Jeb's kids can breathe a little easier next time they commit a felony. But then again, they never really had anything to worry about in the first place, because the Republican judges would never convict another Republican.

I used to be in the media, working in radio for CBS and ABC among others. Things are not done the same way today, and a large part of it has to do with the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in the mid-1980s and deregulation of ownership rules.

Clear Channel Communications at one time owned over 10,000 radio stations (as many as 8-10 stations in some markets)-- I think they've gotten rid of some of their lower performing stations since. They wanted to own many more back in 2003 when congress stopped further FCC deregulation. The ownership consolidation has lowered salaries in radio and diminished the quality of talent. It has also made media especially beholden to the Republicans and their laissez-faire regulatory objectives.

Could you imagine if the anthrax attacks had happened on Clinton's watch and nearly six years later nobody had been charged? Not a day would pass without smears, fingerpointing, talking points, and outrageous allegations by the Right Wing Noise machine-- let alone NEARLY 2000 DAYS WITHOUT ANYONE BEING HELD ACCOUNTABLE.

But then again, when you've screwed up Iraq, Afganistan, Katrina, Abu Ghraib, Harriet Meirs' Supreme Court nomination, the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill, spying, turning the largest surplus in the history of the world into the largest deficit in the history of the world just to name a few debacles -- NOT capturing terrorists is the EXPECTED outcome.

I would like to know how much GE (parent company of NBC) has received in defense contracts since the beginning of The Ongoing Strugle Against Global Islamo-fascist Terror™.