Hey hey hey! Blue state lefty here living so close to the ocean that I can smell the tide when it's low. I hate big cars, gasoline, Republicans and petroleum wars. I also live in a selfish fantasy bubble within which my wealthy neighbors and I up and down the coast are digging our heels in to make sure we don't have to live like the urban and third world poor whose coastal views have been contaminated by overcrowding, industrialization, transportation of goods and the general detritus and filth of the 21st century.

Most of us aren't Rockefellers or Vanderbilts. We're middle-class people with kids in public schools and a mortgage and car payments to make. We don't care what our 2-acre minimum lot size commute 40 miles into the city every day lifestyle is built upon. All we care about is that when we flip the damn switch, the light comes on.

Somewhere far away people are dying to keep our oil flowing. Yeah, Bush sucks - I hate him, too. We fielded the best we could find - perhaps the greatest man ever to emerge from our elite prep schools. Thank you, John Kerry, for representing our interests so boldly in Washington and throughout the rest of the world. Now please go away.

Windmills are cool. They remind me of big pinwheels. I saw the ones in Altamont once and was enchanted with them. Thank god they're hidden way over there, though, because here in the summer I want to sit on the beach with my goddamn fried clams and look out over water that's blue without any confusing spinning things to make me dizzy. Mexicans live in Altamont - not in Duxbury, Hyannis, Yarmouth, Dennis or Harwich. If we can keep the Mexicans out we should certainly be able to keep those greedy industrialists from building any spinning shit that might get in our way.

We get our power from oil which comes to us on big ships. Every once and awhile one of them runs aground somewhere and lots of fish and seagulls die. Fortunately we keep those ships away from our beaches here. I'm not sure that I could enjoy the beach if I thought there might be oil there.

I've seen the filthy cesspools that get created when lots of poor people live on top of one another. Delhi, Bombay, Chongqing, Shanghai. They can't help it, though, right? I mean, if they could, they'd all live like we do on Cape Cod, too. We must protect this lifestyle for ourselves at any cost!

The 21st century has barely just begun and we've already comfortably buried our heads in the sand. I sure hope we can keep it up!

P.S. Where were Ted Kennedy, et al when that oil-fired industrial abomination of an electrical plant was built along the canal in Sandwich? I'll take a hundred graceful windmills over a dirty concrete smokestack any day. You should, too.

The "not in my backyard" misanthropes who live along the south of Cape Cod who so vehemently object to their precious ocean views being tarnished by these graceful, functional, wind sculptures bring great shame to the people of Massachusetts. In case you haven't noticed - TED KENNEDY - the world is being turned upside-down because of the energy trends we face. Wake up - and leave Hyannisport if you're worried that the windmills are going to make your yachting adventures and sailboat paintings less pretty.

Joan:

I'm so happy that it appears that you are writing a blog now for Salon. I didn't see an announcement for it - I followed a link to this post from elsewhere.

You're one of the best writer's Salon's got, Joan (out of a stable of pretty goddamn excellent writers!) and we'd love to hear more from you. I hope that you find the blogging to be rewarding, save for the unfathomably mean comments that some people seem to come up with on here.

I've been "with" Salon all along and the site has played a role in my defining my moral compass and outlook on events for more than 10 years now. It is nice to see you saying "I told you so" about this war when so few have taken responsibility for the roles they played in the run-up. Our childrens' children will wonder where the dissent was during these painful times. A great deal of it was right here.

Thanks re: downloading Greasemonkey first. I knew it had to be something easy like that.

John Kerry's "swiftboating" was such a vile and disgusting act that spawned so much hatred in this country. Please, oh please, fellow Dems and liberals, don't use it as a model for conducting the next round of elections. Let the social conservatives ruin Giuliani with their own bible-thumping nonsense.

And Yay for Salon!

Great article - great interview! Congrats!

OK - we got Scooter Libby - probably the least evil among that band of criminals. Yawn.

What is important coming out of this is the FACT that JOSEPH WILSON WAS RIGHT about Saddam Hussein's WMD program and that THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION WAS WRONG about Saddam Hussein's WMD program.

The Bush Administration marched the United States to war on the basis of deliberate lies and when challenged about this rather than concede that they were wrong they struck out at the people who were right.

Let us never forget the lies that brought us to the situation we're in today.

If I was poor and forced to live in the wreck of New Orleans, I'd probably be doing drugs, too.

There are many, many worse things to be involved with than Ecstasy and marijuana.

Good for you, Lindsay!

Thanks for linking to the Rosie O'Donnell poem. My wife and I found it to be rather moving.

Auto-refresh is great for Salon's front page because it consists only of headlines. Having a blog page auto-refresh while reading deep inside a post is annoying. People reading blogs regularly refresh manually. Please turn auto-refresh off.