What an incredibly intelligent and gifted journalist sadly shunted to MSNBC. Reading his words I was struck by a memory of the Chinese students in Tienamann Square who built a statue of freedom as a symbol and sign to what they were trying to both say and achieve.

How great it would be if we could build a monument of white marble in front of the White House, or better yet, the Capital, and on that monument inscribe those words.

We as a nation are being manipulated by fear. And yet, how odd that we, whether we live near Ground Zero or near a roller rink in Indiana seem frozen by the same fear. How, crazy it is to think jihadists will come softly in the night to plant IEDs under our baby's bassinet. We fear this when the fear that a layoff, a serious illness, a hurricane or tornado, a drug addled burglar, a drunk or distracted driver are so much more a threat to our lives. Yet we support a government that bleeds dry the programs designed to protect us from job loss, health emergencies, weather disasters, crime and even auto safety. And let us not even talk about the more long range and not as palpable dangers of a collapsing environment. We let them do this to spend billions on dubious efforts to attack "Islamo fascists."

We know better. What we don't know is how to express how we know better. What a different world the twentieth century might have wrought if the majority of Germans turned off the rantings of Joseph Goebbels and switched their radio dials to Fibber McGee. I wonder how this country and this world might turn out if Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, and Rush Limbaugh ranted into a mike and it sounded like a tree falling in an empty forest.

"Tipping points, don't go there, world is flat, I'm mad as hell and not taking it any more," all these cliches will not help us. Only a way to collectively say,

We're not buying it. We are not afraid of the future, the world or the people who populate regardless of what they think of us. We are not afraid to talk to them, to deal with them, to compete with them, to argue with them, and if necessary to go to war against them. But we are unwilling to go to war with people solely because we are afraid.

And don't know why.

First we needed to invade Iraq to destroy their WMDs. Then to topple a terrible dictator. Then it was to bring peace and democracy to the Middle East. Now we are freeing the slaves? I didn't know Iraq had slaves. I can't wait for the next Bushycophant to draw a new historic analogy. How about using McKinley's excuse for colonizing the Philippenes: "to bring civilization and Christianity to the savages." Yeah, that one works even better than emancipating the Iraqi slaves.

This is why I get my TV news from the Daily Show. She could have at least asked him what he believed Camus was trying to say when his character killed the Arab, or what "three Shakespeares" he read. MacBeth? Richard III? A Comedy of Errors?

Comparing Waylay to Cathy is like comparing Zippy the Pinhead to Garfield. Cathy is years of marketing two jokes: "I'm fat, I don't have a boyfriend" Waylay's Story Minute is an artistic expression of the quirks of human behavior and Americana. It sometimes makes me laugh but often makes me go "Hmmm", which is what I think Carol Lay wants to do for her readers.

Like This Modern World, K Chronicles and Tom the Dancing Bug, I check out Waylay each Tuesday before I read anything else on Salon and I've never been disappoint; sometimes amused, sometimes curious, but I appreciate that she changes themes, even artistic expression (the cubist world was interesting, but not dull). The drunk girls? Ever heard of the Bush twins?

It's art. You want a cheap chuckle go read Dilbert.

This could, should, have been easily discovered back in 2003 when reports were coming out that critical CPA jobs were being handed out to ill-trained "Up With GOP" kids. Maybe not this alone, but how different the political landscape, and perhaps Iraq, might look today if sometime before the 2004 elections, our independent investigative press had bothered to do some independent investigating.

All is not lost, though. Perhaps after November 2006 I might get to look forward to hearing about this all over again at Dubya's war crimes trial.

I thought this site was the alternative press. ;)

Could you post a list of your favorite alt and Euro press?

When I was a kid Scholastic offered a subscription to World Press, which was an eye opener. Since then the trail has gone as cold as the hunt for Osama. Yes, I do Google, but there is so much chatter you'd think I was spying on all Americans. If you've distilled the noise down to the 90 proof please send it along to us neophytes.