The more we hear from members of this administration, the more mind-blowing it becomes. Completely banal bureaucrats acting completely omnipotently. As if the issues under question aren't enough, his incredible hubris, the sheer balls of the defense, if defense of the indefensible is possible, is it's own problem.

Albert Gonzales is telling us directly, to our face: "There's nothing here. It's over. I appeared before your committee and I spoke. That's enough for you, all you get. Dismissed."

The man should be pilloried.

The reaction of John McCain to the speech in Chicago by Obama was the most significant development of this dust-up. It is, even at this late stage, both stupefying but understandable that Romney and McCain would paint 2 Democratic candidates as unpatriotic. It is encouraging to their opposition that Obama can come roaring back.

But John McCain responded to this speech with a press release of absolute significance. His main thrust was inconsequential, merely further besmirching of Obama's stance and character. But then he added, as a twist of the blade he assumed, a snarky aside correcting a spelling error in the hard copy of Obama's transcribed speech.

A marvel, isn't it, how lives unfold? With this one little aside, John McCain has signaled to us that he's done. Over.

Everyone knows that Obama didn't write the damn hard copy and that an insignificant typo is the error of an intern or copyist. To remark upon it would be a sign of pure desperation but to say desperation implies that some hope remains. To make the crack is the sure sign of the depleted bully. And not the playground bully but the back-of-the-class, cowardly kind, the Karl Roves of the world.

It's the "tell". To resort to this means there's nowhere else to go. Anything else he has to say in now empty air, inconsequential. John McCain is simply a rat in a box, waiting for the sharp stick to descend. And he knows it even if he's not yet aware of it.

Good-bye, John.

Once Pepper's newness faded there was never a question that it's value lie as a cultural event and not in it's musical value, George Martin's producing achievement aside.

As a sonic artifact it's value is indisputable but it's role as a bellwether in an ascendant youth culture is what has earned it the rep it enjoys.

It's old news that everything the Beatles were or became is present in Revolver, it's vitality contrasting starkly with Pepper's decadence of only a few months later, another symptom of the acceleration of space age pop culture.

Pepper doesn't explain it's era, it's of it. To look for answers in the grooves is an error. We had a great need for relief from the tensions of Viet Nam and civil rights. The entertainment world was changing along with everything else and in no small part by the Beatles contribution and we treasured them for bringing Fun from Merry Olde.

But the sixties was a period like any other, with one foot in the past on it's way forward. Because of our esteem, we gave them a pass on Pepper's excesses and music hall barminess when we weren't tripping over each other over-analysing everything about it.

But events soon overshadowed it and the hippies made the Beatles begin to appear passe. And the white album was confusing and...

Where were the bottles of seltzer and the klaxon horns?

When I was but a wee lad old school variety magazines often had a humor column based on readers submissions or the odd wire service story that was usually a collection of anecdotes concerning the foibles of people or the mundane day-to-day pitfalls of life. A little comic relief based in schadenfreude or, if we were honest, a little laugh at our own shortcomings.

This article about congressional reaction to the "dangers" of the internet might be just such a story, one of those of the "ain't-pollyticians-dumb" sort, if it wasn't the ONLY news ever coming out of Washington.

Because it IS the only news coming out of Washington or, rather, out of our political and media systems, especially since we endured the Republican "do-nothing" Congress of recent years. But it looks like the Democrats won't fail to disappoint.

Every shred of any kind of news about any of our members of Congress, either House, either side of the aisle; anything at all that comes from the lips of the current Administration, goddamn fucking ANYTHING. Any act they pass, any budget they enact, any response to what the rest of address as the Real World: Nonsense. Hysteria. Triangulation. Self-Justification.

Pardon Scooter Libby? What the FUCK!

My friends we have allowed a Bunch of Clowns to Commandeer the Ship of State. We've given them the Keys to the Family Car, We've Given Barney Fife all 6 bullets.

A Bunch of Clowns. Look at the field of presidential candidates, either party. Is this the best we've got? The constant pandering, the illogic, the subsumation of basic common sense in reaction to shit like this miracle of modern technology, the freaking internet?

The internet. Progress. Interactivity. The end of the one-way banality of television. A way to rebel against the dominance of the Main Stream Media, Advertising, the corporate dumbing-down of America. A two-way street, a way to establish dialogue between groups, nations.

And the clowns tumble and the Ringmaster screams "Danger, danger!" We must regulate, we must Clamp Down, "The children, the children!".

Oh, help us all.

Like I said!