Okay, so there's been a lot of puzzled and/or sarcastic verbiage thrown around about the Democrats and their perplexing failure to do their job in Congress. Anyone who reads Greenwald's blog is pretty much well versed on THAT part of the issue.

Now let's ask the next question: assuming that the Democrates in Congress are not a bunch of spineless slugs (I mean, they DID get elected, often in highly competitive races, that ought to count for at least a minimal job qualification), WHY are they so readily granting the President everything he wants on this issue?

At the risk of sounding unduly alarmist, I propose the following hypothesis: the Democrats themselves are in on it. "It" being whatever was so horrifically illegal about Bush's wiretapping activities. They either aided or abetted or did SOMETHING that in the court of law would make them "accessories to the crime." Thus, the retroactive immunity for telecom companies as well as members of the administration (and the cessation of any meaningless investigation of the matter) constitutes immunity for these Democrats as well.

Eh? Eh? No? Well, there may be a much less sinister reason for their behavior. Such as a $40,000 contribution to their coffers from the telecom companies. But why would a Rockefeller care about that paltry sum is really beyond me. If anyone has a better hypothesis, I'm all ears.

Yeeeah, seems that as the reality-based community is insidiously swaying the United States towards it's view of, well, reality, the White House continues to slide into fantasyland, where if you say something with enough emphasis, then it's true. I hate to uphold Godwin's Law here, but this brings to mind Hitler in his bunker, planning operations that could never be carried out with panzer divisions that did not exist.

We've spent the last seven years drifting in a strange alternate Universe where a fervent belief into something would somehow make it real. (Wait... that sorta sounds like the kind of "blind faith" advocated by religious fundamentalists.) And something tells me to watch out for a book by W. (coming in April 2009 to a bookstore near you!) which describes how our administration warriors were greeted as liberators in Iraq, showed those damn terrorists that you don't fuck with America, strenghtened our "moral values" and rammed through laws that make America great (such as taking the kid gloves off of the CIA interrogation squad).

Perrino is not solely at fault for saying all that crap. She is only a small part of the problem, just like one's mouth is merely the conveyance for all the lies germinating in one's brain. She's a symptom for a parasitic infection that has afflicted America for almost a decade now. We need some antibiotics, stat, before it would take a horrible invasive surgery to cure this disease.

{yawn} spineless so-called "Democrats" in so-called "Congress" give our Dictator in Chief everything he wants, yet again {/yawn}

Can anything else happen in American politics these days? Do they really think that their Great Takeover of Congress in 2008 is such a foregone conclusion that they can practice appeasement with Bush until 2009, and then just undo everything he's done? Or do they really WANT to have the power to torture and are happy that the Worst President Ever will take the blame for it? Maybe both.

And by the way, at least Feinstein is very obvious about where her ideology and loyalty lies. How about all the other Democrats (and, well, Arlen Specter) who furrow their brows menacingly every time our Dictator in Chief does something illegal, threaten "consequences" and then... make everything legal for him? If anything, that's even worse.

Think about it, folks: this is just the beginning of our downward spiral.

Er... Obama is not bringing up the whole haircut issue, is he? I think what he's saying is that Edwards was not this huge populist that he used to be in the Senate (I've no idea, I'd have to take Obama's word for it, if I thought it actually mattered), and making a point that while Edwards was out there making money for HIMSELF as a trial attorney, Obama was out there working for "the people". Again, you can make a (credible) point that this is somewhat of a cheapo shot ("I'm more of a populist than him, neener neener") but call it a "caricature"? Hardly.

Another possibility is that the right-wing cut-throat strategies have so polluted our airways that even Obama's borderline cheap shot sounds like something measured and polite in comparison.

And considering that what with the global warming, we might be getting more sunny days per year, every year, this solar power thing is starting to feel real good.

I also wonder if they're going to install more solar panels on the UC Berkeley campus. There's a lot of roof space here and we eat up a ton of energy, especially the lab buildings.