The guy says he's interested in doing nothing, his sexuality is zilch, and he considers suicide, and you say Right On?

You're fired! I just hope somebody reaches out to this guy before he's dead.

You wrote a wonderful column for the guy who says, I'm not interested in actually DOING anything, but I'm having a great time goofing off, and especially like all the time I have for lovemaking with my honey, and I get to learn all kinds of new stuff on TV, too. Cosmology, dinosaurs, religions, history, wow. And the movies! And the odd jobs I have to take are sorta fun and bring me into contact with a lot of interesting people, who are worth writing about if I ever get around to it. But just figuring out this crazy universe is so fascinating I don't know if I'll ever have time to do anything really productive.

Now, THAT guy is on the right track.

"Follow your bliss," says Buddha, which is meant to say, find the path best for you and walk it joyfully. If all we do is mesh with the world and serve pizza, or even withdraw from it and contemplate it like a monk, we are part of its beauty.

And, if the well-documented psychic phenomena happening all around us (see "Psychic Detectives" on the Court TV channel) hint at an actual collective psyche, contributing to it benignly is a contribution for which we can all be thankful.

Now call 911 for your writer immediately.

I am extremely skeptical of organizations which make it very difficult for members to communicate with them and devote little effort to giving any kind of feedback on such communications. I assume those kinds of groups are just using the numbers of their memberships for their own purposes.

That very clearly was done this week with the MoveOn "poll".

I decided a long time ago to ignore MoveOne for that reason. If they want to reform, open up and interact with their membership in a meaningful way, I would welcome such rehabilitation. Otherwise it's the delete button for them.

There are some great moments in American political history, and the emergence of MoveOn was one of them. It started with kicking back at the Clinton impeachment, for those of you who have forgotten what "move on" meant.

But as it grew and became more influential, it also became more hidebound. You had to really work at finding how to communicate with them, and there was never any indication that anyone was listening. That fails my basic test for a grassroots organization.

Clearly, the position taken by MoveOn this week originated at the top and was pressed upon its members disingenuously.

So today MoveOn joins the ranks of the K Street hacks.

. . .to a neocon. What he means is, We want to get in there quick with the military, and then get on with the real task, stealing their oil and converting them either to Christianity or loyalty to the U.S., or both. He's heard it and said it so many times he assumes we understand his shorthand. Unfortunately, he still hasn't read the election returns from last year.

Reality about Vietnam started hitting the Johnson administration hard when somebody who knew what he was talking about said that we were never going to win that war until we put a soldier behind every tree in Vietnam, and maybe not then. It was a civil war plus a war of ejection of an occupier (us). Sound familiar?

At least in Vietnam, one side of the civil war was very highly motivated, so the outcome was predictable. In Iraq, both sides of the civil war are highly motivated, and there are actually two occupiers, us and Al Qaeda. The outcome is not at all clear.

This is complicated further because part of the Cheney neocon philosophy is that serious diplomacy is for wimps and losers, hence the only deals that can be made are those issued from the Green Zone with the seal of the U.S. on them. So until now there has been no peace conference, and it is not at all clear that the American representative appearing in the one that is imminent will have serious negotiating authority.

It is politically incorrect to compare the Bush administration with Hitler, but what we are seeing is the bunker mentality. The whole thing is coming down all around them, but the orders remain the same: press on to victory. In the end, only total defeat will be left, and blame cast by the losers upon their countrymen.

That last item is the last, sad link to Vietnam.