Or wait! Could it have been an adroit political move by the Senate Democrats? If they censure MoveOn for THEIR inflammatory rhetoric, then they have a carte blanche to censure every single bad word the right-wing commentators say from now on... oooohhh, if only they follow this up with some real backbone! At least then we'd see into their clever stratagem to beat the Republicans at their own game... by becoming them!

Alas, our civil liberties pay a heavy price in any event. But hey, given the events of the last six years, who'd ever notice?

I can just imagine the look on Bush's face when he explains to us that a Decider's job is to make decisions. I can also very clearly imagine him waking up every morning and telling himself: "You're amazing. You're doing a tough job, the toughest in the world, and you're doing it better than anyone else ever could. You rock, boy. Ain't nobody tellin' you different." And then he goes out and tries to explain, ever so patiently, to the great unwashed hoi polloi that, you see, the President's job is to make decisions. Since, you know, the uneducated masses don't GET that. We quite obviously think that the President's job is to flip pancakes. And no matter how often he tells us what his job is, it just doesn't seem to stick to these vacuous minds of ours. Therefore, every time we ask him a question, he must begin by explaining that, you see, a President's job is to make decisions. And by extension, W. is doing a heckuva job.

("Making decisions", in this administration, seems to have the same meaning as "answering a question." I.e., if by making noises in response to a question you have, in fact answered it, then by signing a paper in response to a situation means that you have, in fact, made a decision. Whether the answer makes any sense, or the decision is any good is irrelevant. What matters is the act, the process, the look-and-feel, the paraphernalia. If Bush feels like a Leader, he IS a Leader.)

And while he plays with his toys, the nation burns. This is a man who's never had to take responsibility for anything in his life; there were always people who would quietly clean up whatever mess he made, be it urinating on a car or blowing up the Middle East. Whatever happens, HE won't be held responsible, so he can "make decisions", feel proud of himself and rest assured that nothing will ever come back to bite him.

Like Hitler (yes, I said Hitler), he is living in an imaginary world, playing at Great (nay, messianic!) Leader, and is enabled by a group of cynical tyrants who use him to do their dirty deeds unimpeded. Like Hitler, he's ruining his country and making his people into world pariahs. Unlike Hitler, he will most likely never commit suicide in a bunker after his world comes crashing down around him. More's the pity.

"The Chinese-Soviet border, where the loss of agricultural lands could force even more of the Chinese population north of the Amur."

Um, yo, Mr. Pope. Not to be a nag or anything, but since 1992 or so, this has been mostly a "Chinese-Russian border". There is no such thing (at least on paper) as the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics". Hasn't been around for fifteen years. Please update thy maps.

That's all.

DLF said it here first: Limbaugh is a lyin' rat and for all we know he has no balls to blackmail a hooker into sleeping with him, let alone a journalist into writing a positive story about him. (Unless that "journalist" comes from something like the New York Sun.) Ms. Walsh, you're wasting your time trying to unravel this mystery: it's a red herring! There was no intimidated journalist. There was a pandering sycophant who said: "Hey, just leave me tied up and give me a black eye, and then you can claim that you threatened me with bodily harm. But you know I love you." Plenty of those if you know where to look.

Sort of reminds me of Tucker Carlson claiming to have beaten up a guy who came on to him in a bathroom.

Good grief.

You know, back in the day, nations that couldn't mine or afford to buy enough tin to make their own bronze ended up learning how to forge their own iron tools and weapons, which later took over the world. The rich always end up complacent and stagnant because well, if it ain't broke, why fix it? And so they are slow to see change coming, which usually turns out to be disastrous for them.

In this way the poor nations that have neither their own fossil fuels nor the military power to capture foreign fossil fuels must needs make do with innovation, which in turn will make them rich (just you wait) when the existing status quo runs out of, well, fossil fuel.

I'm hoping that Senegal will find that building nuclear power plants is a risky venture, even more so if you have (gasp!) Muslim population or if you happen to make the wrong kind of friends. I'm hoping they figure this out very quickly and pursue innovation instead. It's horrific poverty may be Africa's best hope for future prosperity.

Or I may be on crack. Whichever.

Y'all have to realize which PART of California we're talking about. This is San Diego, the area that elected a Republican congressman after the incumbent Republican congressman Duke Cunningham went to JAIL for BRIBERY only because most residents over there hate illegal immigrants. So, if that area burns, to Fox News it must be the work of al Qaeda.

Now, if Berkeley or San Francisco were burning, why, that'd be God's wrath to punish the godless homosexual liberals. What else?

God, like al Qaeda, is very aware of the regional nuances of Californian politics.